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Show Tunnel Sunk as Gamble for Gold Of Cripple Creek Many Believe That Under Water Is Deposit of Fabulous Wealth. DENVER. The newest large-scale large-scale gamble in the West where the pioneers made it fashionable to risk anything from their luggage to their life on the turn of a card involves pouring $2,000,000 down a big hole beneath a gold camp and hoping water will come out. The costly hole is to be a tunnel, biggest privately financed project of its kind, which will pass deep beneath be-neath the water-filled mines of Cripple Crip-ple Creek, historic gold camp southwest south-west of Denver, which yielded $18,-000,000 $18,-000,000 worth of ore yearly in the heyday of the 1900s. Officials of the Golden Cycle cor- poration, mining firm which is financing the tunnel project, don't think it's much of a gamble. Neither Neith-er do the people of Cripple Creek, who saw their boom town die and razed most of their buildings to save taxes when water choked the deep mines. More Millions Vanished. They believe that under the water lies a wide gold deposit of fabulous wealth. The tunnel which will be 9 feet wide, 8 feet high and 32,000 feet long is designed to drain the water from the mines in a radius of 30 square miles. Golden Cycle officials believe that the drained mines will hp nrnrinctive for another 20 years and that additional millions of dollars of gold will be added to the $450,000,000 already taken from Cripple Creek. Trained crews are working day and night to drive the deep-drainage tunnels, named Carlton tunnel in honor of the brothers who founded found-ed the Golden Cycle firm, through six miles of mountain by next summer. sum-mer. Drilling was started on July 18, 1939. Driving through solid rock at some points at an average speed of 55 feet a day, the crews bad reached the 15,208-foot mark on June 1. Officials said the half-way mark in the six-mile-long tunnel should be passed by July 4. At the present rate of drilling, they said, the tunnel would be finished by the summer of 1941, a full year ahead of schedule. Precedent for Belief. The Golden Cycle firm has a precedent prec-edent for its belief that the tunnel will drain the mines and once more start the flow of yellow ore from Cripple Creek. A smaller tunnel, started in 1907 and finished to a length of 24,255 feet 11 years later, completely drained the Cripple Creek crater for 2,100 feet below the deepest mine shaft. The tunnel-called tunnel-called the Roosevelt bore reopened the field for 10 years before -water again flooded the diggings. The Carlton tunnel will be 1,100 feet below be-low the older bore. Miners in the Cripple Creek area long have believed that veins in the region converge in a great yellow mass at the throat of the extinct volcano on which the gold field stands. They hope the tunnel may permit mining deep enough to reach the volcano throat. Water expected to flow from the new tunnel when it is completed will be an important addition to Colorado Colo-rado irrigation, officials said. Flow through the tunnel will drain into -the rich Arkansas river valley, Colorado's Colo-rado's "vegetable bowL" |
