CARLIN – The mining industry may run in Megan Tibbals DNA. She has worked at Newmont Mining Corp.’s Gold Quarry Mine for 14 years, but she has been around the industry all her life.
Tibbals said five people in her family have been miners — her great-grandfather, grandfather, father, uncle and herself. Her father moved the family around while he worked for mining companies in several states, and he still works in the industry. Most of his career was spent working for smaller mining companies
“I think when we were young he moved to Goldfield and my mom said she wasn’t moving there,” Tibbals said. “So we stayed in Denver a little while longer.” After her father got a job working for a mine near Winnemucca the family moved, and that’s where Tibbals grew up.
When that mine started shutting down, as gold prices dropped, her mother liked Winnemucca and wanted to get her children through high school.“My dad got a job selling chemicals,” she said. “It kept us kind of stable and the same town to grow up in.”
She knew in high school that she was good in math and science and that is when she started leaning toward an engineering career. “I took an anatomy class and I was not good at medicine,” she said. “The sight of blood makes me pass out.”
While Tibbals wasn’t born in Nevada, just like the other miners in the family, she went to the University of Nevada, Reno. “I’m actually the fourth generation to graduate from the Mackay School of Mines,” she said. “In my generation we didn’t have any boys that wanted to go, and I’ve always kinda been pretty good at math and science, so I said I’ll go.”
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