Page images
PDF
EPUB

INVINCIBLE AND CALEDONIA COMPANIES. 225

Thompson mill.

pany shut down.

Before it fairly started, the Com

They have driven a tunnel into creek about 160 feet, designing

each bank of the to strike with each eight or ten of their best lodes at great depths. On one lode they have a shaft 90 feet deep, good whim-house and whim, and an ore' vein two feet in width. They have also a barn, boarding-house, store, etc.

The Invincible Gold Mining Company, represented by C. C. Welch of Central, divide the best property of the District with the National. They have six to seven thousand feet of lodes, one of which they are working, saw-mill, water powers, &c. The Sampson is on the extreme head of North Clear Creek, has a shaft 60 feet deep, two feet of ore, assaying $40 to $50 a ton. It is being developed by Mr. Welch.

Peck Gulch lies between Wisconsin District and Central City, and is the extreme head of Chase Gulch. Its chief vein is the Mann, owned by W. J. Mann, and B. F. Pease, developed to a depth of 60 feet, where its crevice is eight feet wide, twothirds of it ore. Mann & Pease have a 12-stamp steam mill near the lode, in running order, and in which the surface quartz paid from $5 to $18.50 a ton. The ore they could not make pay. It prospects very rich. They have about 300 tons of ore out and design to soon start the mill again on surface quartz. There are several other lodes in the vicinity, less developed but considered good.

The Caledonia Gold Mining Company own 361 feet on the Caledonia, the great lode of Wide

Awake District, which the reader will remember is seven miles North of Black Hawk at the head of Missouri Gulch. Have one shaft 267 feet deep, one 140 feet, and four others, 25, 45, 90, and 130 feet, some showing a good vein, and some not. Shafthouse 30 by 30 feet, 10-horse engine, complete hoisting rig for two shafts, smith-shop, &c. Have an old 6-stamp, steam mill, also a new mill, 30 by 50 feet, 40-horse Little Giant engine, and Crosby & Thompson machinery throughout; mill built, machinery not set up, not at work. Sam Cushman of Central, agent.

The Washington and Wallace Companies, own property considerably developed, on the Wallace, Washington, and Wide Awake lodes. Neither have mill nor machinery, nor are they at work at present. Sam Cushman of Central, agent.

The Mountain Eagle Company-property on the Caledonia. Have a 9-stamp, steam mill, are mining and running mill, quartz yields about $15 a ton. S. B. Morgan of Black Hawk, agent.

David Clow has a new 12-stamp, steam mill and property on Caledonia. Is at work with average

success.

All these districts have the advantages of cheap fuel, lumber, and mine timber, of pasturage, and most of them of water power.

CHAPTER IX.

Clear Creek County-General Characteristics-Idaho-EmpireThe Mines of Idaho-Spanish Bar-Trail Run-Fall RiverMorris and Downieville Districts-Empire Mines-Griffith & Argentine Districts-Discovery, Development, and Richness of the Silver Mines.

CLEAR CREEK COUNTY is so located as to just embrace the country drained by South Clear Creek. The reader will please remember that Clear Creek forks fourteen miles within the Foot-hills from Golden City. At that point corner Gilpin and Clear Creek Counties, one meant to cover the north, the other the south fork of the Creek. From this point to the crest of the Range, South Clear Creek forms a gigantic tree, as it were, forty miles in extreme length, worn down into the surface of the wilderness of upward-sweeping hills and ridges from one to five thousand feet in depth. All along its trunk and throughout its main limbs and smaller branches, Nature has hidden her treasures of gold and silver, her jewels and precious stones; and as if determined for once to be magnificent, has not only well-marked her cache, but grouped here the indispensable means of unearthing and rendering them useful to man. The enclosing hills are low

and often smooth, grassy, and sunny, receding and ascending gradually and affording means of easy access. There are many bars of considerable size, smooth and pretty, offering delightful sites for towns, excellent places for mills and mining works. There is abundance of fuel, and unlimited "range" on the hill-sides for stock. Six hundred feet of the creek gives, with the volume that may be used, on a turbine wheel, a power of one hundred horses, and the valley is so open that there is hardly any point for ten miles where powers can not be taken out on both sides, making for this distance, one hundred and eighty in all. Taking the two forks with their forks into the calculation, it is not too much to say that they and the main stream furnish, from Grass Valley Bar to their sources, six hundred first-class water-powers. The bars were somewhat mined in the early days of Colorado, but that, as has been before observed, has now pretty much ceased.

The quartz mines now engage the principal effort. These are considered first-class, and are almost universally well located for tunneling. The advantages of tunneling where the ground will permit— for instance, where there is ample room on the creeks for the rubble, and where the hills rise at an angle of 45° or more from the streams to a great hight-can hardly be overestimated. Its cost in Colorado at present is between $25 and $30 a foot. All ground above the tunnel may be broken down instead of up, which in itself is a great saving of time, labor, and powder, as every practical miner knows. The water runs off through the tunnel

CLEAR CREEK COUNTY.

229

and the ore may be conveyed on dump cars through the same channel into the mill, saving costly hoisting and pumping machinery and power, the construction of surface roads, a great deal of heavy teaming, and excavating for whim and shaft houses. And in the mill which uses hydraulic power, fuel and machinery are economized. It would seem that mining by means of tunnels and treating by water instead of steam mills, ought to pay handsome dividends on unwatered capitals on ten-dollar rock, provided the veins are of average size, regularity, and richness. And where a tunnel can attain a depth of one, two, or three thousand feet in the course of a reasonable length, the ground above will be seen to be clear gain when it is remembered that beyond a certain depth it is unprofitable to mine, because the expense of hoisting the ore and water overbalance the value of the ore. The advantages of unlimited water power and mining by tunnels are common to every part of Clear Creek County.

Idaho, the county-seat, is situate on Payne's Bar, at the mouth of Virginia Kanyon, seven miles above the junction of North and South Clear Creeks. Good wagon roads radiate from Idaho to Denver, thirty-five miles east, to Central City, six miles north, and to Empire and Georgetown, twelve miles west. It is nearly 8000 feet above the sea, and is noted not only for its mines but for its hot soda springs, which have been improved until they are a most delightful place of resort. The waters, internally or externally, or both, have valuable

« PreviousContinue »