SSR Mining’s Cripple Creek and Victor operation, Colorado’s only large-scale gold mine, produced about $830 million in statewide economic activity last year, a company-commissioned report shows.

One open-pit mine on the flank of Pikes Peak now anchors more than half of Teller County’s GDP, supports hundreds of high-wage jobs, and support thin mountain-town tax base. For metals investors, that is the real story: physical gold production still funds local balance sheets long after the bullion leaves the ground.

Colorado Public Radio reported that more than $700 million of that impact landed in the Teller, El Paso, and Fremont county economy. Mine general manager Lowe Billingsley told a recent press call the operation accounts for more than half of Teller County’s gross domestic product.

“We understand the responsibility that comes with that,” Billingsley said. He added that the company does not take its role in Teller County or the trust of the community for granted, and that the mine’s reach extends well beyond the site into Fremont and El Paso counties.

We do not take our role in Teller County or the trust of the community for granted. In Fremont and El Paso counties, the mine’s impact extends well beyond the mine site.

Payrolls, ounces, and a thin tax base

The mine employs about 430 people and extracts more than 150,000 ounces of gold each year from an open-pit footprint covering thousands of acres. Average annual wages run about $94,000. Those figures matter in towns where residential tax rolls cannot carry basic services.

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Victor Mayor Barbara Manning put the constraint in plain terms. The city has a tax base of about 400 residents. Mine-related income, she said, is what makes infrastructure repairs possible on systems she described as ancient.

You cannot run a city on the tax income of 400 residents. So the mine’s income will allow us to have better infrastructure repairs to ancient, truly ancient infrastructure that needs to be replaced or modernized.

Victor also holds a $15 million contract to supply water rights to the mine for 25 years. That arrangement sits beside a major leak in the city’s aging water system last May, a reminder that municipal plumbing and mine water demand are now tightly linked.

Local dependence on a single producer is not unique to Colorado. Similar concentration shows up in our coverage of how Colorado’s lone gold mine drove statewide activity through payrolls and contracts rather than headline spot prices alone.

Manning also stressed continuity. Generations of residents have family who worked in the mines. She said SSR and the Cripple Creek and Victor mine support hundreds of people and local businesses, and that the town appreciates having the operation in its backyard.

Community checks and modern operating claims

SSR Mining, described as a Denver-based international firm that purchased the mine last year, runs a community investment program that sends $100,000 each year to both Cripple Creek and Victor for local nonprofits. The Cripple Creek Victor School District receives an annual $20,000 grant for special programs outside the general fund.

Cripple Creek Mayor Annie Durham pointed to those grants and to the company’s response on air quality. After local concerns, SSR added and upgraded air monitors. Mine tours, shut during the COVID period, have reopened.

Billingsley drew a hard line between historic and current practice. Modern mining, he said, is very different from the old days of a burro, a pickaxe, candles underground, and little safety regulation or concern. Safety, he repeated, is the first priority every day.

Safety is our first priority. That’s what we focus on first thing all day, every day. It’s the most important thing we do.

Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer of the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC framed the operation as part of a longer Southern Colorado story. Mining, she said, remains an important piece of the regional ecosystem. Legacy industries, in her view, should be enhanced rather than replaced.

Our mining legacy is also a story about our economic future. One of Colorado’s greatest strengths is our ability to build on the industries that we already established in our state while we continue to develop new ones. But economic development isn’t about replacing the industries that built us, it’s about enhancing and growing beyond.

That growth logic appears elsewhere when producers map multi-year output paths, a theme we tracked when Caledonia Mining set a path toward 200,000-plus gold ounces through staged expansion rather than a single price spike.

Drill holes, permits, and a possible run to 2050

Late last year SSR completed a technical study built on data from more than 14,000 drill holes. The study says mine life could extend to 2050 if state and local agencies approve expansion permits. Projections attached to that path include 900,000 additional ounces of gold and more than $220 million in additional annual economic impact for the Pikes Peak three-county region.

Those ounces are not guaranteed. Permits still sit with state and local agencies. Until approvals land, the extension remains a planning case, not an operating fact. Investors who follow miners know the gap between drill-indicated inventory and permitted production is where timelines slip and capital plans change.

Key figures from the report and local comments include:

  1. $830 million statewide economic impact last year
  2. More than $700 million concentrated in Teller, El Paso, and Fremont counties
  3. About 430 employees at roughly $94,000 average annual wages
  4. More than 150,000 ounces of gold produced each year
  5. Potential 900,000 additional ounces and $220 million-plus in yearly regional impact if life extends to 2050

Regional output stories can reshape how capital prices mining jurisdictions. We saw a parallel when Ghana’s record gold output reshaped Africa’s mining map, another case where volume and local economic weight moved faster than distant policy talk.

What the footprint means for metals capital

Cripple Creek and Victor is a producing open-pit asset, not a paper claim. Its reported statewide impact, wage base, and GDP share show how a single permitted mine can stabilize mountain-county finances when residential tax bases are tiny. That is cash flow into schools, water systems, nonprofits, and contractors, not just ounces on a quarterly slide.

High gold prices raise the stakes on the ground. When bullion holds elevated levels, both licensed and informal operators race to convert rock into cash, a dynamic visible in our reporting on how Peru’s illegal gold mines kept winning under strong prices. Colorado’s case is the regulated reverse: a large employer seeking multi-decade permits inside a clear county tax structure.

For portfolio construction the distinction still matters. Physical bullion and gold ETFs track monetary demand and real-rate regimes. A mine equity or royalty tied to an asset like Cripple Creek adds operating leverage, permit risk, water-contract exposure, and local political support or fatigue. The $830 million impact figure is evidence of real economic embedding. It is also a reminder that community consent and agency approvals can matter as much as the gold price path.

Central banks continue to treat gold as a reserve asset rather than a speculative chip, a backdrop we examined when gold pushed above $4,600 and official buyers kept accumulating. Strong official demand supports the price environment in which mines like this fund local payrolls. It does not erase the need to watch permits, costs, and grade.

SSR’s commissioned report and the press-call comments present a coherent local narrative: large impact, high wages, community grants, safety first, and a technical case for life to 2050. Independent verification of the full report methodology is not in the public summary covered here. Readers should treat the $830 million and $220 million-plus extension figures as company-commissioned estimates pending the usual scrutiny of assumptions and multipliers.

Mine life is a balance-sheet question for the towns on Pikes Peak’s flank. It is also a duration question for anyone who owns the metal those pits still pull from the ground.