| Show written tor for this paper VICTOR GOLD MINE copyrighted 1696 by bv frank G carpenter CRIPPLE CREEK august 6 1896 YEARS ago i it t was a hole jin in the side of the hill now it is one of the most famous us of 0 f the cripple le C creek r e e k gold mines and the report comes A from om new york that hat fifty one per cent of its stoc stock k has just been sold to a french syndicate syndi date for the same syndicate bought the other forty nine per cent three years ago for KO it now 0 owns ans the whole mine and it has paid for it the enormous sum of anore than one million dollars this is the story of the victor mine which has for more than two years paid a monthly dividend of 20 or two per cent a month on a capitalization of gold is in sight to keep the miners busy at the pres present ent rate for wore tidore than two years and it will ably pay dividends for years to come the ithe stock is owned it is said by french brench farmers and market gardeners who are I 1 operating through a paris house and who are enthusiastic over the dividends div idenys which they have already received and aad still the victor mine cost moffat and smith the colorado millionaires who developed it only and they have until this last sale been getting one oce half of its enormous dividends dave moffat is colorados colorado Is biggest millionaire lio no eben smith his mining part ner is also a millionaire he is said to beibe beibe most expert judge of mines in tiie the west he was ridin riding over the mountain above cripple areek creek about soar four years ago when he passed that 1 colein aole ho lein in the ground two inexperienced miners were working at it they and asked him to come mopped sto e d smith and look ok at their claim he went over aud and crawled down into the hole he inspected the rock and saw t that hat it contained a fine vein or ore ife he grunted a little as he got out as though it did zot amount to much and upon the men saying that they would sell the mine for 65 he be laughed at them and went away AU As soon as he returned to Lm leadville adville however he telegraphed his agents to find out whether the parties had bid a title to the mine and to buy it if they could they did buy it paying the owners cash with an option onit on it for one year for 65 coo this is the way many mines are bought the vigder understanding standing is that the purchaser hall at once put his bis men in to develop the mine and all the gold taken out up to the amount of the option shall belong to the sellers if in the course of ome specified time nine months or a year be e fails ai to 0 take a e out that amount or tails foils to pay it the mine with all the gold taken out reverts to the original owners the victor mine paid tor for itself from the start within a month several thousand dollars worth of gold paying ore had been sent to the amel and long before the year was up moriat and smith out of the proceeds of their ore had received back their had paid the additional all ah the expenses of putting up their works and also some big dividends they then capitalized the mine at a face value of and offered to sell the stock this akis was along in about I 1 1892 when the whole mine was offered by them for sale in new york for coo the new york capitalists however were afraid of it and it went begging they continued to develop the mine mine and later on they sold the first lot of stock at ninety per cent of its par value to the french syndicate guaranteeing dividends for a limited time now they have sold the balance of the stock at twenty five per cent above par and have as I 1 have said cleared nearly a million and a quarter of dollars in less than four years out of a single investment the above seems to be an easy way of making money it represents however an enormous amount of labor a fortune invested in machinery and the use of executive ability equal to that of managing a big manufacturing establishment lish ment some people seem mohave to have the idea t that bat al all I 1 that is necessary to get gold when you have found a mi mine me is to push a wheelbarrow up tc to the mountain and dig out the bullion with a pick the truth is an enormous enoi amount of work in connection with the discovery covery and development of every good mine all over the hills about crindle creek you will see piles of earth they look like new made graves and th they fy are in many cases the graves of the disappointed hopes and expectations they are the holes of unfortunate prospectors and the huts situated near them are in most instances the places which form the homes of prospectors who lived thus when they were trying to strike it rich the whole region surrounding the victor and other big anines ot of this cripple creek region re is honeycombed honeyc omed with prospectors I 1 rode to cripple creek through the ute canyon via the florence and cripple creek railroad we wound in and out through gorges gorges the red granite walls of which rose s straight raight t up for hun deeds of feet now and then these rocky walls seemed to almost touch the sky A clear mountain river flowed through the canyon canyo nand and in these walls of rock and along the stream were little dugouts and rude at places I 1 saw caves in the rocks walled in with logs and I 1 was told that all of these places were the homes of men some of the huts are not big enough for a man to stand upright within them and you could not stand in the center of any of them and swing the traditional cat the roofs of the huts are flat they are of logs upon the top of which dirt has been thrown in order to keep out the rain while around the foundations dirt has been piled up as a protection from the cold jt it was in such houses that the cripple creek prospectors first lived and such a home was probably that of the original discoverers of the victor you have all heard the story of how the cripple creek mining camp originated in a cow pasture and how last year more than worth of gold was taken out of the ground upon which five years ago cattle grazed you have heard that the country looks like a farm today and that it would not be strangely out of place if it were dropped down in some parts of pennsylvania or new york this is so irl in some respects but far different in others the country about the cow pasture is walled with mountains it is more than a mile and a half above the sea the victor mine is is on one of the mountains high above cripple creek and all of its gold has been taken ont at a level of more than two to miles in the air above new york boston or san francisco over this mountain the prospectors went digging here and there until at this point they saw what they consider ed good indications and staked out a mining claim this was according to government regulations 00 oo feet wide and 1500 feet long comprising all told ab about outten ten acres of ground they began to dig and made a hole ten feet square re after a time they got so deep they c could uld not throw the dirt out by hand and they rigged up a rude windlass and hauled the ore out with a bucket they soon got liged tired ot of this and finding that the outlook was hardly so good as they hoped they sold it to other miners on an option of 5 oooo these parties were working anen moffatt als ats men offered them 65 which they accepted the farat parties making their and they clearing out of tile mine A description of my visit to the victor mine will give you an idea of how the they get the gold rock out of the earth r t asked professor william weston a graduate of the royal school of mines of london and one of the best mining entine engineers ers of colorado the other day as to this cripple creek region and how it came to have gold in it he tello tell me that the territory isto is to a large extent volcanic said he I 1 I 1 this is the way I 1 suppose that the gold came here imagine imagine a great basin of granite about si six x miles wide and the lord only knows how deep this lay jay here on the top of the when all at lonce ages ago there awe came a bang and la a burst up A volcano knocked a hole lin 1 in the basin asin and a tremendous stream of lava of just about the color of cream flowed in it filled fille d up the basin and then got solid then ages followed and then there was another shake up and this lava was cracked in every direction now up through the cracks came steam and gas and hot water with gold and quartz in solution this penetrated every break in in the rocks and gold was deposited on the sides of the cracks in the lava the quartz went with it and the steaming quartz and gold forced its way into the pores of the lava nearest it soaking into it like water in a sponge and altering it into a rock full fall of quartz and gold sometimes there were two cracks running for half a mile or so parallel with one another and only a few feet apart the gold fluid soaked from the cracks on each side into the lava rock between and filled its pores with quartz and gold such a combination is called a vein and the two cracks are the walls waft or the sides of the vein it is not a true fissure vein of ore in the proper accept ance of the word but it gives you in simple language an idea of the veins about cripple creek in addition to these there are other cross veins and yo you find cracks running oft atrom the main veins containing this quartz and gold then by the action of the weather throughout the ages a soil collected upon the loose rocks the trees and grass came and the country developed as you now see it all about you I 1 I 1 it was a vein like the one above described that the prospectors of the victor discovered it was a great grayish blue sandwich of gold and quartz brunni runni running ing through walls of lava it had granite connected with it and the rock to the ordinary eye when taken out looked like cobble stones and broken granite immense works had to be erected to get the gold out of the mines and I 1 could see the big frame buildings contadini con containing taini ng these standing bleak and bare again against st the sides of bull hill as I 1 drove up these are the golden palaces of the victor they look more like pennsylvania bank barns than anything else but they represent millions and the mines under them are as cere carefully fully watched as to the saving of every bit of ore as is the business of saving the cents in a bank or a great department store it is not easy to get access to a great gold property like the victor I 1 had letters however irom from mr moffat and the manager of the mine went through agh its workings s with me we first dres dressed sed in suits of oilcloth and exchanged our derbies lor for old slouch hats going i into ato the shaft house I 1 was s shown hown the im im mense engines which are used to raise the rocks from the depths depth of the earth the victor mine is on top oi of a mountain and the shaft which goes down into it cutting its way w ay through the rock at the side of this vein vein is is I 1 j judge adge about eight feet square and at present writing athas it has been sunken to a depth of more than five hendred feet this shaft is walled with boards within it there is an aa elevator much like that used for in a big store which is r raised ond and lowered by means of a great wire wire T rope 61 pe this rope passes over a pulley about fifty feet above the shaft and is connected with a steam engine in the shaft house the engineer stands with his hands upon the levers and as the miners down under the earth pull the wire ro ropes which ring the signal bells he knows just where here to move the elevator from rom the shaft tunnels run off on into the vein at different levels sixty five feet apart each of these tunnels is a great pipe made by digging out the gold ore it has a little railroad in it and the gold rock is loaded into iron cs can about the size of a small dry goods box each car will hold about a ton 0 of f 0 ore an and d when filled fi led jt it is pushed on to the elevator vator and a is signal ignal to the engineer e brings it to the top A car has just been taken off as we teach reach the shaft house and the manager of the mine directs us to step on to the J elevator he ae signals the engineer and we start downward to look at the mine within a few seconds we are far below 6 the surface the shaft is filled with a darkness so dense we can feel it we huddle close together for fear of touching ag the board walls of the shaft and fall for sixty five feet before we come to the first level here we see a score of dirty miners in jeans and get a glimpse of a car load ot ore which is being pushed forward to the shaft each miner has a candle which he holds in a curious iron candlestick and the light makes him look 4 almost spectral against the darkness of 0 the tunnel in the background then there is another signal and we fall sixty five feet ta the next level here are more miners and away off in the tunnel where the miners are working we see the gleam of the candles then there is another ring of the bell and we drop to the fourth level and here nearly three hundred feet below the ground and still more than two miles above we leave the elevator to explore the artificial golden caves of this great victor mine we find several iron cars of ore waiting to be shoved upon the elevator as soon as we are taken off the rock seems to be ot of a slate colored granite and we look in vain for any signs ot of gold our candles are lighted and the manager na nager starts ahead and leads us off on into the darkness the tunnel is about five leet feet wide and so high that we can stand upright in it it is blasted out of pure rock the walls on the sides are of ragged rock and the top is of the same character here and there the tunnel widens and at places we find cb chambers ambers dug out of the mountain we are told that this comes from the difference in the size of the vein and the manager moves his candle along the walls and shows us the vein ot of rock which here he produces reproduces the gold jit it is of a slate color and at the point we look is just about two feet wide it ranges from two to twenty feet in width and is a great sandwich of gold bearing rock between walls of other rock running slantingly a great plate of gold rock down into the earth how deep it goes no one knows the tunnels through which we are already more than a quarter of a mile in length and so far as they have moved downward the ore has grown richer at present only a small part of the gold has been taken out of the vein these tunnels are only pipes of rock cut as it were out of the golden meat of this great sandwich there is sixty five feet of ore along the vein above and below each tunnel and this gold is left to be mined in the future this is called gold in sight and the miners might work at their present rate for several years as I 1 have said and not get out all the gold which they thus know to exist the ore is of different grades in different parts of the vein most of the high grade ore has assayed over per ton some runs only 40 40 a ton and some less but it is all very valuable As we pass on through the tunnel we see the work it takes to get out the gold the rock is of the hardest kind and it has to be blasted down by means of dyna hymi te and diamond drills here by the light ight of a tallow candle stands a miner dressed in homespun he holds a piece of steel the size of a broomstick and quite as long against the rock we see anat it is already some distance into the rock and he pounds upon it with a great hammer moving it t around and around and boring as it were atom by atom a hole into the gold bearing ore he has different sizes of drills he uses a short one at first then changes to a longer one until at last he has made a hole deep enough for fora a stick of giant powder about him other miners are drilling and before long there will be a half dozen holes cut in this way out of the solid rock into each of these will be put giant powder |
