Contango reported its Johnson Tract road finished six days before a judge upheld the permit

Contango Silver & Gold finished a road and two bridges at its Johnson Tract project before a federal judge ruled on the permit that authorized them, according to the company's own filing.

The Fairbanks-based company told investors on September 8 that crews had completed "on-site construction of the road from the camp to proposed portal location." The work included bridge crossings at Double Glacier Creek and the Johnson River. The release was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"I am pleased to report that we have safely completed the road work and bridge installations connecting Johnson Camp with the proposed portal site," Chris Kennedy, Contango's vice president of operations, said in the release.

Six days later, on September 14, U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason upheld the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for that work and closed the case. Cook Inletkeeper, the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council, the Center for Biological Diversity and commercial fisherman Anna-Maria Mueller brought the lawsuit. The work they challenged was already built when the court ruled.

Gleason rejected all three of the plaintiffs' claims, under the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act. She decided the case on the written record, without a trial, siding with the Corps and with JT Mining, Inc., the Contango subsidiary that holds the permit. JT Mining had joined the case as a defendant in August 2025 and argued for the permit alongside the Corps.

A permit stays in force unless a court sets it aside or halts the work. The plaintiffs never asked the court to halt it. The court's docket shows no request for a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction, the orders that can stop work while a case is pending. The plaintiffs asked instead for a ruling that the permit broke the law and for an order canceling it. The case ran from the May 2025 complaint on a written-briefing schedule, with a pause from October to November 2025 while federal funding lapsed. Nothing reviewed shows that any order stopping the work was issued.

The Johnson Tract is a roughly 21,000-acre inholding owned by Cook Inlet Region, Inc. It sits inside Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, at the headwaters of the Johnson River above Cook Inlet. Contango is exploring it for gold and base metals.

The road in the September 8 release is the road the permit covers. In a September 2024 release, Contango said the Corps permit, issued under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, allows it "to construct an access road from the Johnson Tract camp site to the proposed portal and laydown area." The court describes that road as 2.3 miles long. The permit also covers realigning and expanding the airstrip to 5,000 feet.

The company has given two dates for that permit. A September 2024 release dated it August 21, 2024. A November 2024 release dated it September 10, 2024. The court's decision accounts for the gap: the Corps approved the permit in an internal memorandum in August 2024 and issued the permit itself in September. Contango has also described the road as 2.3 miles long in some releases and 2.6 miles long in others.

The September 8 release said the portal pad and "all surface site preparations for the underground exploration drift development have been completed on time and on budget." An exploration drift is a tunnel driven underground to reach and sample the ore. The release does not say whether the airstrip work has been done.

The company also reported other work. It said geotechnical drilling was finished within the easements for a separate access road and barge landing that would link the site to the coast. It said most environmental and cultural baseline studies would wrap up within weeks. It said engineering is underway to substantially expand the camp in 2027.

The Corps permit covers exploration only. The mine itself is under a separate federal review. The Federal Permitting Council lists the "Contango Ore Johnson Tract Critical Metals Project" on its public dashboard. It describes an underground mine producing copper, zinc, gold, silver and lead, with no mill and no tailings facility. Ore would be sealed in containers, trucked to the coast and barged from a loading facility on the Tuxedni Channel of Cook Inlet.

The Corps is the lead agency on that review. The National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also hold actions. The reviews include an environmental assessment, a Section 106 historic review, consultations under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and a Park Service permit.

The dashboard shows 4 of 12 processes complete. It lists May 5, 2028, as the estimated date to finish environmental review and permitting. Contango's release says permitting for the surface infrastructure, the access road and barge facility to the coast, "remains firmly on schedule."

The company describes the project's economics through a preliminary study, not a feasibility study. It cites an Initial Assessment that assumes a gold price of $4,000.

This account rests on Contango's filings, the court's decision and its docket (Cook Inletkeeper v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, No. 3:25-cv-00097, U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska). The material reviewed does not include the plaintiffs' view of the construction timeline. It does not include any statement from Contango about the lawsuit, beyond what its subsidiary argued in court.

The next public milestones fall on the federal dashboard. Contango has said the camp expansion engineering is aimed at 2027.