CLIMAX

unincorporated mining town, Lake county, central Colorado, U.S. It lies in the Park Range of the Rockies at Fremont Pass (altitude 11,450 feet ), 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Leadville. Much of the world's supply of molybdenum was produced at a mine in nearby Bartlett Mountain that is the largest underground mine of its kind in North America. Molybdenum was first discovered there in 1903 by gold prospectors who ignored it, thinking it was lead. The metal was subsequently identified by the Colorado School of Mines, and later, when its value as a steel-toughening alloy was recognized, a worldwide demand ensued. Climax thus became one of Colorado's most prosperous mining towns. Pyrites, monazites, tin, and tungsten concentrates were recovered from the mill tailings. in ecology, the final stage of biotic succession attainable by a plant community in an area under the environmental conditions present at a particular time. The species composition of the community remains the same because all the species present successfully reproduce themselves and invading species fail to gain a foothold. Because climatic changes, ecological processes, and evolutionary processes cause changes in the environment over very long periods of time, the climax stage is not completely permanent.