Show is I 1 IGNORANCE OF REAL VALUE I 1 J X IT f BY T S PHEBY H X 5 I 1 ballarat ballaran Ball arat cal nov 5 the purpose of talis ig article is to sh show ow how companies and individuals often own lar large ge groups of claims i and fall fail to learn much about their holdings until years after becoming possessed of them the case in question is that of the black rock claim one of the tuber com banys group situated in tuber canyon fourteen miles north of ballarat ballaran Ball arat inyo county california in the panamint district about five years ago this group consisting of the oh be joyful worthless and black rock claims was under option to san francisco parties the oh be joyful being the principal claim was the only one to receive any large 9 1 amount of attention some twenty men were working on this latter claim and three or four on the other claims of the group A prospect shaft was sinking at this time on the black rock and having no assay office the superintendent depended entirely on the horn spoon to determine the values which in most cases was quite sufficient at the time of my visit the shaft had reached a depth of forty five feet and sinking had ceased and the ladders removed as the bottom did not prospect more than 5 and the 0 B J was running up to 20 we found some ore showing free gold in the dump however which had come from the shaft but had not been saved separately all going over the one dump on a 50 degree hillside this good ore was very heavy and much heavy white precipitate remained in the horn and even pieces showing free gold to the naked eye would show no colors in the horn there was a large amount of gypsum calcium sulphate in the vein and the general formation and it occurred to me that probably this heavy material in the ore was a sulphate of lead or angel site I 1 took one of these good pieces and a few days later assayed it and to my surprise obtained 26 ounces silver 31 ounces gold and 30 per cent lead I 1 was only a visitor had no interest in the property and soon returned to arizona interest in this high assay soon waned and no more attention was paid to the black rock for years the bendees did not take UP the group and the option lapsed A year or so later the group was sold a mill erect 11 d and eventually the 0 B J was worked out the black rock was located about a half mile west of the camp and hardly anyone ever visited it or paid any attention to it four annual assessments had been done ne in driving a tunnel west on the vein and some feet from frani the old shaft the tunnel happened to be started here more www www because it offered a natural tunnel site than anything else A crosscut cross cut tunnel any place on the claim might have answered just as well after this four years work this 80 foot tunnel reached a shoot in the big vein about feet east of the old shaft the last man working here told the owner just one year ago that he found good big hornings in the face still no attention was paid to this outcast claim this summer the owner returned and cyanided the large pile of tailings that lay below the mill after finishing this work he concluded the jig was about up one day as a farewell he took a trip about the group and reached the black rock assessment tunnel the ore in the face when horned showed in places as much as 50 per ton and the whole five feet exposed was good for 20 A man was at once put to work crosscutting cross cutting the vein in the face and twelve feet of ore was found good for at least 20 per ton this was all that required a change of plan and work was immediately started on the worthless old black rock claim A whim is now in place and a large working shaft is down sixty three feet at the bottom a small crosscut cross cut has been run to the hanging wall and the vein is exactly by measurement eighteen and one half feet wide and shows good milling values all across the showing is better by long odds than what the owner paid for in the 0 B J ground it is the intention to immediately order a gasoline hoist and to extensively develop the vein and the property now promises to become one of the best in the panamint range this is an example of one man or a company owning more ground than can be conveniently prospected although not an example of an unusually large group here is a claim upon which values have been known for five years and positively in sight for the last year the owner was wag too much engrossed in one other claim of the group to give it proper attention it is a big undertaking to give one claim its due so the work on a group of say five ten or twenty claims can well be imagined I 1 appreciate that everybody wants acres that is groups 1 I am no exception however a district is often kept back by a company holding more than it can develop the discoverer as is natural and as any of us would do generally locates all he can monument before others learn of his strike then he tries to sell five ten or twenty claims for the same money he would ask aak for two or three now this price has often little bearing t on the value of the claims and as it is very difficult to appraise un developed mining claims consequently he asks what he thinks should pay him well for his sojourn on the desert but more commonly what he calls a stake any group is worth that is not worth more if a locator should divide his many claims into groups showing at least one good claim to each group and then some ground or acres h he e might in this way make several sales the aggregate of which would be much more than he might get for all his holdings if held in one group it divides the first and often the best locations so as to interest many men in a locality calit y where eherd might be just one individual or company working it is to the advantage of the district generally and to the immediate vicinity particularly especially if there is a desire to raise money for development purposes by stock subscription no widespread interest is taken when the whole country is held by one man or company I 1 do not think however in the case of the black rock claim this obtains as that was one of only four locations and those somewhat scattered this case simply suggested what is too often the case in many other promising districts |