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Show 1 UDE riiES Men Narrowly Escape in ! Bullion-Cottonvood Canyon Can-yon Near Mary3vale. Activity in Developing ! , Great Potash Deposits of j ' District Grows. ,i By J. I'. GIBES. f.-. i;il trj Tie Tritmiir, I A I A It VSVALK, Utah, Marrh . On IVIiruary ynovvliilo t hat killffl livrs hordes anil from wliinll two limn I liari'ly ii-airil with Ihrir lives, start-' start-' i-l at llin base of Hriyham peak, on i lli n I Ii 1 1 1 i ii Cot tiiMvviiod iliviilc, ami k'af hi'rin material anil momentum in its nti:i:i descent, passeil rluvvn over the ' finiil burn mine, iu the head of the north fork of ( lotton wooil canyon, anil on down into the bottom of the eanyon. The lirailbnrn alunite mine is being .operated by Swift & Co. of ChicHKO. I'eter .IriiM-n and son, of Junction, had loaded their sleighs witli alunite ore from the Idas, and wore starting down the road to tin; relay bins, when the swift rush of snow was heard above ihi-m. There was no time for escape. With terrific force, the avalanche cau'dit the men and teams and carried them a limit souO yards. One horse of Ilie six escaped instant death, and how the men, mixed up, as they were, with the debris of stones and trees iu that maelstrom of swirling, rushing mass of snow and ice, escaped with their lives are frequently in evidence. The elder is just one of those near-miracles that Jens, n escaped with a noMserious.lv injured in-jured back, while his sou emerged from the hair-rai.-;iiig adventure without a scratch. Formation Is Peculiar., Those immense fissures and deposits of alunite to the south of Bullion-Cot-tonwood divide comprise au exceptionally exception-ally interesting geological freak. Tho country rock in 1'iue (Bullion) canyon is principally andesite and associated porphyries capping bedded quartzito and limestone, forming contacts not unlike un-like tho Deer Trail; while on tho south side of th! divide, iu Cottonwood canyon, can-yon, the formation is very largely rhyolite, and also resting on quartzite on' a substructure of quartzite and limestone. lime-stone. ft wax from the mass of rhyolite that, by the circulation of heated solutions, the atoms of potash were collected from profound depths and convej-ed into the open fissures. From those quarryliko fissures the Mineral Prod-uots Prod-uots corporation, controlled by Armour Fertilizer company, is drawing its alunite alu-nite for the manufacture of potash. Also, from other quarryliko fissures Swift & Co. arc extracting a hundred tons per day, a part of which is being crushed and calcined at the Florence rnill, near Marysvale, the other portion going cast for like treatment. Product Is High Grade. The raw ore carries close to an aver-ago aver-ago of 10 per cent potash (K-0), and after calcination has expelled the ::S per cent sulphuric acid and lo per cent moisture, the potash content has been about doubled, thus forming an exceptionally excep-tionally valuable fertilizer, especially adapted for use on the tobacco and cotton cot-ton fields of tho south. There appears to be a widespread impression im-pression that potash is the only valuable val-uable product derived from alumte ore. The fact is, in the near future potash will be a bv-product and alunnuum will, become tho chief money-making product. prod-uct. The raw ore contains 280 pounds per ton of aluminum, and when the alumina, alu-mina, after the potash-leaching process, emerges from the plant it contains lOuO pounds of aluminum per ton, and is practically like bauxite, from which the larger part of tho world's supply of aluminum is obtained. Cudahys May Enter. Thero is a fairly authentic rumor in circulation to the effect that Cudahy & Co., also of Chicago, has secured an option on the fine ore bodies of the Florence company, adjoining tho Brad-bUrn Brad-bUrn and Mineral Products mines, and every one of Marysvale 's citizens is hoping, and perhaps mentally praying, that the rumor is true. (While we are verbally and otherwise "cussing" "capitalism," wo are welcoming with open arms each representative of "big" business to "the alunite fields of this locality.) Vhilo immensely profitable for large capital, tho aluminum-potash industry is not a "poor man's game." Xor oven with inexhaustible bodies of al'inito una plenty of capital behiud them can the industry be made successful suc-cessful if it become tho football of ross incompetency and rascality. During the past four years, continuous continu-ous efforts to make the almost mountains moun-tains of "white1' alunite in this vicinity vi-cinity available for industrial purposes have been made, and it is now practically prac-tically . certain that the immense deposit de-posit in Deer Creek canyon can be successfully exploited; the average potash pot-ash content in that vast quarry is close to S per cent. Tho so-called white alunite is a mixture of lesser or greater great-er quantities of silica and altered rhyolite, rhyo-lite, running from four to eight per cent in potash, with a corresponding percentage of aluminum. The Deer Creek ore is purple, containing no altered al-tered rhyolite. On the ' east" side, or west descent of the Sevier plateau, about nine miles from the Denver it Kio Grande station, is a lar;e deposit of the white variety a mass of pure alunite crystals, associated as-sociated with inconsequential impurities, impuri-ties, that will doubtless be worked the coming season. |