Show FM MOUNTAIN 0 CITY DISTRICT OF NEVADA by willialm willis M E the mountain city or rather the old cope mining district embraces considerably over square miles of mineral bearing ground most of which with the exception of a small piece of it lying close to the town of mountain city has never had a pick stuck into it and while the surface indications are as fine as may be found in any portion of the west its distance from the railroad and the lack of reduction facilities cili ties has so retarded its development that at the present time it is almost virgin ground for the prospector and that it will well repay the intelligent efforts of the industrious dust rious prospector there is not the least doubt for a number of years this district has been almost entirely deserted by the prospector and miner with the exception of some placer mining carried on in the spring when a plentiful supply of water runs down every little gulch for two or three months this fact of itself is one of the best indications of the mineral wealth of this district for almost every gulch within within the limits of the district carries more or less of the precious metal and no real prospecting has ever been done to find the sources of this gold in the early days of mining in this county about all the prospector looked for was rich silver ore and his search here was handsomely rewarded for very rich ore was found on the surface and several sliver silver mills were at one kne time kept constantly running in the camp on ore which yielded up in the hundreds of dollars per ton but there are a number of surface faults in this camp and when the old timers reached a depth of not to exceed feet in any place and the vein faulted with them they made no effort to discover it deeper down but abandoned work at that point and looked for another rich pocket as they called it so that it soon got the reputation of having rich bunches on the surface and nothing below and the camp was soon abandoned for other fields which promised better returns for less work mountain city at one time had a population of over all supported by the rich surface silver ores and the placer operations erat ions which were carried on in all of the gulches from these two sources more than 10 were produced in the early years of the camp and since that time a number of men have made their living here by working on the old placer claims and dumps it remained for the nelson brothers to demonstrate that the veins of this district went down and it is due to their faith and hard work that the camp is once more fairly on the road to prosperity they were drawn to this country from colorado during the gold creek boom about six years ago and finding that that boom was based on very little and liking the looks of this part of the state they branched out from there and soon decided that california hill in this camp offered better inducements du cements for intelligent prospecting than any portion of colorado from which they had just come they made several locations on this hill where old shaft and dumps showed a great deal of high grade ore had been taken out before and where old history has it more than 3 of silver vas was taken from near the surface during the first three years of the camp and after satisfying themselves that there was still ore remaining in the bottoms of some of these old workings they started a tunnel down near the foot of the hill which was to crosscut the veins at a depth of over feet fortunately for them and for the camp they discovered a blind lead before their tunnel had reached any distance and as its trend was in nearly the direction they desired to go they followed it and after working for four years they had made such a good showing that they interested russell of pittsburg pa who took their properties on a bond and last summer erected a concentrating and plating mill of about forty tons daily capacity this mill was completed too late in the fall to get in supplies etc for the winter but it will be started this spring as soon as the roads are in condition for hauling freight |