| Show 0 BLACK SAND AND PLATINUM As a result of the unusual demand for platinum in the manufacture of materials needed in war and of the decrease in supply through smaller imports resulting from the curtailed production in russia the united states was confronted with a serious shortage of this metal and the market price rose to four or five times the price in 1914 on account of this unusual situation and the need of ascertaining the possible increase of production in this country the bureau of mines department of the interior decided to investigate some of the more promising localities on the pacific coast where gold and platinum are known to be associated with such minerals as magnetite and with various siliceous minerals the aggregate constituting what are commonly known as black sands the object was to determine whether any of these deposits are large enough and contain sufficient gold and platinum to be profitably exploited and also to determine whether the base minerals present especially the iron minerals might be commercially merci ally utilized as a source of iron the investigation was entrusted to R H R hornor metal mining engineer of the bureau of mines who proceeded to marshfield coos county oregon and spent a month in the field of coos curry and josephine counties oregon and del norte county california the results of the investigation may be summarized by the statement that in general the black sand deposits are disappointing in both value and quantity they rarely contain enough gold and platinum or occur in adequate quantity to be exploited at a profit there are it is true a few favored places where small areas of the black sand show some precious metal content and these may become the site of small operations the deposits in many places contain appreciable amounts of magnetite and but these minerals are generally too scattered and too poor to constitute an important source of iron ore especially in competition with the known deposits of magnetite on the pacific coast the chief difficulties in the profitable exploitation of these deposits are first lack of uniformity in occurrence and metallic content and second the high cost of mining and treating the materials the first record of beach mining was in 1851 at gold bluff humboldt county california where gold was discovered on the sea beach associated with black and gray sands this discovery was soon followed by others farther north along the california and oregon coasts the period of greatest activity appears to have been from the beginning to the middle seventies when the richest and most accessible of the old beaches were being worked from that time until the present many futile attempts have been made to work both the present and the old beaches for the gold and platinum that they are supposed to contain A few individuals it is true make a precarious living by working places along the coast where at certain times of the year the tide and storms effect a rough concentration of the sands but wherever an attempt has been made to work and sands on a large scale failure has invariably been the result black sand mining in the past has offered a fruitful field for unscrupulous promoters and has been especially alluring to men having little knowledge of mining or mining methods these swindlers lers lisua usually visually lly claim to have some wonderful machine or process for extracting gold and platinum from the sands many of these agents made the most extravagant trava gant claims for the processes or machines some of these process men were so bold as to claim that they could recover gold and platinum where it could not be detected by any known scientific method As a result the pacific coast is strewn with the wrecks of many kinds of experimental machines and of plants that bear evidence to the credulity and childlike simplicity of those who had been induced to invest their money in schemes for treating the sands technical paper notes on the black sand deposits of southern oregon and northern california has just been issued by the bureau of mines copies of this report may be obtained free of charge by addressing the director of the bureau of mines washington D C |
