When she first saw it, Ester Kirsch wasn’t sure of her husband’s idea. But when Cory Kirsch showed her inside the Earth Angel Radon Health Mine, Ester was convinced.
“I thought he was a little crazy at first,” Ester Kirsch says, “But once I saw inside the mine, that’s when I saw the potential.
After selling Hardware Hank’s in Boulder a few months ago, the Kirsches were looking for a new opportunity. Cory was eyeing the hospitality market, and the Earth Angel Mine in Basin looked promising.
Following the death of former owner Tina Steele about three years ago, the cabins and RV park had been pretty much left “to take care of themselves,” Cory Kirsch said. But the operation had a solid list of returning visitors each year, he said, anxious to continue the radon treatments for their ailments. “When we first got here,” he recalls, “the phone answering machine was full, people wanted to book a stay here.”
He found that many of the callers were from the eastern U.S., particularly Amish communities. Amish visitors to the Earth Angel Mine were common, but booking their stays could be challenging, since the Amish traditionally resist technology. “They have to go to the nearest phone to make the reservation,” Cory Kirsch says, “And if they just get the answering machine, it’s not that easy to just call them back.”
Ester Kirsch said she was a bit more hesitant. Looking at the cabins, she saw a need to upgrade the linens and modernize the rooms a bit. “We have standards,” she says.
It was when her husband first showed her into the well-lit mine shaft, which extends about 600 feet into the mountain, that she became enchanted. Already interested in alternative healing, Ester Kirsch began learning about the reported effects of radon treatments and their popularity. “In Europe, visiting radon mines is very common,” she says. “It’s considered ‘bio-medicine’ there. But in this country, the treatments are considered ‘alternative.’”
She learned that the Montana Department of Environmental Sciences limits an individual’s radon exposure to 32 hours per year for safety reasons. But during that time, visitors remark about improvements to certain health conditions, including asthma and psoriasis. And often, book a return visit.
A brief excursion into the mine shaft reveals many signatures, painted rocks, and other mementos left by previous visitors who soaked their feet in the natural radon-laced spring waters. The interior remains a constant 40 degrees all year long. “So, people can come into the cool when it’s hot outside, and come in where it’s not so cold during the winter,” Ester Kirsch says. There are chairs and benches in various nooks of the mine, with books and games to pass the time during their healing visit.
The Kirsches closed on the Earth Angel on Apr. 22. Now, they are enjoying the work of giving the mine a face-lift. They both speak excitedly about a large group coming to the mine in June, and how they hope to attract even more visitors by making the Earth Angel a year-round destination. Cory Kirsch said he was able to reconnect with the Amish group that was interested, and has lined up transportation to bring visitors from various locations including Shelby, where the Amtrak train station welcomes visitors from the east.
“It looks like a real good opportunity,” he says.
