| Show written for abb paper NEW GOLD CAMP Oy copyrighted righted ISM 2696 tt by prank frank G carpenter SALT CITY september 16 1896 HE MOST won darful of the new A gold regions 0 of the united states is now being behig developed within three hours by rail of salt lake city it is only thirty miles away as the crow flies and its treasures have until now lain within almost walking distance of one ot of the liveliest centers of the west for years some of the most expert miners in the united states have worked in or near it it is known as the mercur mining district and it is on the site where general albert sidney johnston had his camp at the time of the utah war between 1870 and 1880 it was known as the silver sil ver region and in one mine a single pocket of silver produced some of the ore averaging 2000 to the ton at this time the late senator hearst and marcus daly I 1 were amon among the mine owners the assayers tog told them that the district contained gold but they could find no color in the rock and no paying means of getting out the gold marcus daly re deuced the ore to powder and day after day panned and washed it looking for gold at last he threw down his pan in in disgust and said that the assayer was a fraud he left utah and went to montana where he bought the alice mine and from it developed the biggest copper region of the world and still this district is now said to contain more than enough gold to pay the national debt I 1 have gone through one mine which has already produced more than a million dollars worth of gold and which has paid to its stockholders a half million dollars in dividends other mines have been opened which have gold ore in in sight of an estimated value of more than and within the past eighteen months more than 2500 mining claims have been taken up within it it is now producing about worth of gold a day and I 1 see it is estimated that its product this year may amount to the camp as tar far as pay work is concerned is only about four years old and it has been made possible only by the invention invent ien of the new cyanide process for getting gold out of the rock As it is the gold is being mined at less cost in all probability than in any other mining district in the world its ore is so much like that of the rand mining district of south africa that the people have named it the johannesburg Jonan of america the ore can be mined and treated however at less than half the cost of the cripple creek gold the charge for reducing gold at cripple creek is a ton here the chemist of the great mercur mine tells me that the cost of mining and reducing does not exceed 3 per ton while in the sunshine mine about four miles away the ore can be dug out and turned into gold for less than 2 per ton there are already five cyanide mills in operation in the district and there are others in course of construction but let me give you some idea of this last great gold discovery of the world the story is so wonderful that I 1 fear to write what I 1 believe to be the truth lest I 1 be charged with exaggeration imagine it you can three great blankets of g golden olden rock each from five to fifty feet thi thick c k ayi lying ng one halte a above ove the other with bla blankets ket of shale b between t wee them let these blankets begin about four miles above the town of mercur at a distance of a mile and a hall half above the sea and let them slope off in the shape afan of an incline plane cropping oft here and there through the mountains and valley for a distance of eight miles let the blankets be nearly a mile wide and let the golden treasures within them be worth all the way from 5 to 2000 per ton and you have some idea oi of this bonde wonderful ful camp the gold does not lie in little vains cyns between the walls of granite te as in other mines it is distributed tri buted with much regularity through these enormous blankets so that you may start your mine in places where toe vein snows shows out ot of the sides of the mountain ss and dig on andon and on taking nothing but ore bearing rock for maies the district as defined by its working ir mines is known to be at least eight miles long and qt at least 3 feet in width it is supposed to be much lar gerand erand claims have bave been taken up and ho boles arf es have been sunk for miles around one man a well known miner of leadville major bohn believes that the blankets extend more than seven miles in width and he is sinking a shaft away i over ever the mountain almost a half mile i further down in altitude and seven miles S away in the utah valley on a sage i brush prairie he says he will go down at least 1000 teet feet and then he expects to strike the golden blanket many of the miners are however skeptical as to his success but should his theory p prove v e co correct the riches of this district wao will 1 be beyond human conception and the relations of gold and silver the world over may inay be changed by the result As it is at the most conservative estimate the probabilities are enormous three blankets of gold ore eight miles long and feet wide will turn out riches hitherto unknown in gold mining the ore seems to grow richer as the blankets dip down into the earth and the golden gate mine which begin in the valley in which the town ot of mercer is situated utah miners say are to be the biggest mines of the world already worth of ore has been blocked out within them and within a short time their mills will be e reducing this to bullion but let us pay a visit to mercur it is only fifty five miles by rail from salt lake city and we may ride down the utah valley either over the union pacific or the denver and rio grande western railroads to fairfield where we get the wonderful standard guage which by many loops and winding turns drags us up the mountains and lands us in the little nest in the hills where the mining town of mercur lies we are now a mile and half above the sea and surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery of the united states the mountains are as gray and silvery as the hills of greece the sage brush on their sides seems to be covered with frost and the hills are dotted with flowers of all colors above us shines a sky ky as clear as that of italy and all about us rise the great shaft houses of the tee working mines in the nest or val ley winding about in the shape of a horseshoe is the town of mercur it contains 2000 people and it consists of shanties brunni runni running ing along one street which skirts the gully the street is filled with men we the most ot of whom have their pants in their boots and who wear no coats their flannel shirts being stuck into their trousers at first you think they are lazy but you soon learn that they are miners and that the mines work day and night in eight hour shifts so that there are always men off duty waiting for their turn to work about mercur the mines are to be seen on all sides at one end of the horseshoe are the golden gate mines those rude factory like buildings with what seem to be gravel banks beside them are they the gravel banks are piles of ore and that dust is worth 15 a ton as it lies out there under the sky back and to the left of the golden gate is the great marion mine whose mill has been grinding UPI up fitly tons of rock a day since 1893 and which has three miles of tunnels through solid ore with tons ot of gold bearing ore in sight further on is the geyser mine which is now prodoc I 1 lag ing fifty tons of ore a day at a cost of I 1 i 1 77 a ton and adjoining them is the brickyard shaft houses so called be cause the mines c connected 0 with them are under the site of an old brickyard facing the golden gate mine behind you several miles down the canyon are the great sunshine works where the gol golden en blankets are said to be devent seventy feet thick and where the miners work right into the ore from the start in these mines tons of ore are blocked outs out and some parts of the gold bearing rock can be reduced for less than a dollar a ton near this is the overland proD property erty which is largely owned by ex congressman george W dorsey who by the way is one of the shrewd investors here and to the right of you away up the side of the mountain you see the shaft houses and dumps of the great mercur mine one of the first gold gola mines which was opened up and probably the largest producer of all in the camp today out of it has already been taken more than a million dollars worth of gold and it has paid its stockholders more than in dividends the story of the mercur is as romantic as that of the treasures of monte christo six years ago its chief owners were comparatively poor men in the little town of freemont nebraska its president mr john dern about a score of years ago was driving a team for a lumber yard he was a poor german but he saved his money and at the time he be invested in this mine he was I 1 ven ture worth not more or today his income runs into the thousands a month and I 1 doubt whether he would sell his interest in this mine alone for a million it was with him that I 1 went through the mine and from him I 1 got the story of its de one of the freemont men knew that the mercur rock contained gold he got up a company of kans and they bought the property for about they worked it with experienced miners but though the assayers told them there was gold in the rock they could not get it out they wasted thousands of dollars in trying to reduce the ore by quicksilver but failed then they the tried the cyanide process and failed again failed the rock when reduced to flour became pasty and dough like and the solution of cyanide and water would not percolate through it at last as an experiment instead of crushing the rock to flour they put it into the pans in lumps of about the size of a pea md and in this shape run the cyanide solution over it this solved the problem the cyanide solution soaked into the crushed gravel and carried away the sold gold they have now here one of the biggest cyanide mills in existence and though they still lose about 17 per cent of the gold they get enough out of the rock to give them an enormous profit the ore as it is taken from the earth has no sien of gold about it such of it as is ground into a powder looks not much different from the dust of a limestone road and alter after it has gone through the cyanide solution the gold which is taken out is mixed up with a lot of dust which looks for all the world like the scra scrapings angs of soapstone after going through the mill I 1 was shown a lot of this golden dust it the same material was wa in your back yard and you did not know what it was you would probably want to sell it for ashes it looks not unlike ashes it is however the heava est dust in the world and when I 1 was given a long handled shovel and asked to lift a I 1 anticipated no trouble I 1 drove the shovel easily into the dust but lifting it was like lifting so much lead I 1 found that there were twenty pounds of weight at the other end of the handle and upon asking was told that there were about worth of gold in that which I 1 raised from the ground the ore is so reduced and this dust is then sent to the refining furnaces to be turned into pure gold the mercur mining company owns acres of land on the side of the mountain above the town and it is believed that there is gold under the whole acre farm think of a quarter section of land with three blankets of gold bearing rock lying one on top of the other let each blanket run from five to thirty feet in thickness and let there be a blanket of shale or lime stone between the golden blankets and you have some idea of the mercur mine so far wherever the ground has been pierced it has struck the gold and this is the same with ever of mining property in the eight mile stretch which I 1 have described the upper blanket is not quite so thick nor does it average quite as much gold as the two below and still it carries about five dollars worth of gold to the ton in one place they have gone through ther the blanket lengthwise 4 feet and at others they have run out into the blanket at right angles a distance ot of feet I 1 was shown places in which the gold crops out in the side of the mountain and I 1 walked into a tunnel which had begun thus at the surface and which went down down down for 1000 feet the blankets of ore dip at an angle of 60 60 degrees and they spread out in a wavy shape over the territory the tunnel which we entered was high and wide it was cut as I 1 have said tight right out of the ore and as we went down into the earth we found on each side of us great chambers reached by other tunnels the whole making me think of the catacombs cata combs near rome some of these chambers were so large you might put the capitol at washing ton inside of them some have many gamy stories the floors being upheld by great timbers the structure being built upward as the gold ore is taken out the tunnels were so high that we could walk through them without stooping and ro 0 o wide that mat we appeared at times to be passing through vaulted dorr corridors idom every lew few yards we passed openings where other tunnels quite as wide jutted butted off and in many places there them were spouts or chutes down which the ore was rolled and loaded into the cars by gravity every tunnel has its railroad track within it and here and there we found cars loaded with ore there were hundreds of miners at work dressed in im blue overalls blue shirts and slouch hats each man had bad a pick with hun him and each carried a curious candlestick of steel which looked like a ring fastened to what looked to be an immense knitting needle and of such a nature that a man could stick the handle of the candlestick into the earth in some places men were drilling and in others they were getting ready to blast with dynamite in all of the tunnels and in every room the gold bean bearing ng rock was pointed out to us As we looked we could see aft how easily and how cheaply it could be frotten out in some places the strata is uke hike clay and you can scratch it off with your fingers I 1 took out my penknife and dug out the soil containing the ore think of mining gold with your finger i ails still that is what might be actually done conein in some parts of this mine jn other places the gold is in a part of the abe gravel or crushed quartz you could easily dig it down with a pick again it is found in solid quartz mixed with depp deposits sits of arsenic and sulphur the arsenic is pure you could commit suicide at almost every step it you wanted to and the sulphur is so strong io places that with your candle you vou can burn it and fill the caverns about you with flames of brimstone in other places the gold is found in a black rock which looks for all the world like slate and other wheres it appears in solid 4 rock it is not found in nuggets or grains s or pockets but it seems to be a F consistent part of the clay and rock distributed in infinitesimal particles at the rate of a quarter of an ounce and upward to the ton of rocki rock A quarter of an ounce to the ton would be about as much as one part in and it you will take shot and imagine one of 1 them to be ground up and its dust to be y distributed equally through all the che others you will have some idea of how the gold runs through a ton of this rock the average I 1 last ast year was only 12 to the ton or just a little more than halt an i ounce to the ton or about one part in in oooo still it is out of these low grade ores that most of the product of the worlds gold is comings coming today the ore of this region is so easily gotten out that kit it can be mined at a great profit the f rock of the golden gate coate mines is said to be much richer than that ot of the but it is mixed with arsenic to 4 such an extent that a great loss occurs in ia reduction all 0 of the large mills about mercur have their chemical labora tories boiles and at the golden gate there is on |
