OCR Text |
Show GENERAL EXPLORATION COMPANY THE financial and metallurgical difficulties of the Ohio Copper company, which lasted for several sev-eral years and finally resulted In the appointment of a receiver for the big property at Bingham, are more or less familiar to the reading public. A fact that is not generally known is that a quarter quar-ter of a million dollars has been earned from the mine and mill in the last year and turned over to the receivers, placing the company in a position to effect a satisfactory reorganization. The recovery of large profits from a property which had so long been regarded as unsuccessful, brings into the spot-light the organization which has this achievement to its credit. It is called the "General Exploration Company" and has its offices on the eleventh floor of the Newhouse building in Salt Lake City. It was formed a year ago and incorporated under un-der the laws of the State of Utah. Its organizers, stockholders and directors are Alfred Frank, E. L. Newhouse, Jr., Clarence Bamberger, John Mac-Ginness Mac-Ginness and Charles W. Saacke. Mr. Frank is a well-known mining engineer. He is president of the exploration company. Mr. Newhouse is vice-president. Clarence Bamberger, who has operated op-erated many properties at Bingham, Park City and other camps, is secretary. These three gentlemen are directors. The other directors are Mr. Mac-Ginness, Mac-Ginness, of Butte, Mont., and Mr. Saacke, a resident resi-dent of New York. The primary object of the organization was to take over and operate under a lease the Ohio property, which was then in the hands of a receiver. re-ceiver. The lease was granted and the leasing company commenced the working of the property in a thoroughly economical and efficient manner. Its success is betokened by the payment of $250,-000 $250,-000 to the lessor as royalties in the first year. The original lease expired in May, 1916, but as the Ohio company had not completed its reorganization reorgan-ization plan at that date, the receiver granted an extension until September 1, 1916. Besides receiving re-ceiving the large royalties the stockholders and creditors of the Ohio have been benefitted in other ways by the operations of the lessees. A number of important improvements have been made both at the mine and mill and it is stated that the ore reserves have been developed ahead to such an extent that the visible supply of mineral min-eral has not been reduced by the year's operations. opera-tions. Although it was conceived and organized originally orig-inally to handle the Ohio the General Exploration company has developed an organization which has the capacity to handle any mining undertaking. 1 Its moving spirits are young, energetic and spec- I ialists in their several departments. It has considerable con-siderable capital at Its command and is by no means likely to cease its activities with the termination ter-mination of its Ohio lease. Its officers are now investigating other fields with a view to undertaking undertak-ing new ventures and probably will continue to do so. EMMA COPPER 'T'HE management of the Emma Copper com- pany, under the direction of the company's geologist, ge-ologist, is now bending every effort to advance the face of the Herzig drift, which leads directly under the orebodies that made the camp famous in the early days. What the ultimate outcome of this development will be is indicated by the following statement, contained in a letter received on Saturday from the company's geologist by an important eastern stockholder. Mr. Beeson, the geologist, says: After making a superficial examination of the surface and underground workings of most of the mines in this vicinity, I am thoroughly convinced that the Emma Copper property has the greatest possibilities of any one mine in the district. I believe that beyond the Montezuma fault there are orebodies as large as, and probably larger than, those which have been mined from the soluble sol-uble limestones in the past. The Herzig drift is now passing through a very hard, highly-siliclfied limestone. There is but little doubt that the fissures of sulphide ore which we are now passing through will make ore in quantity in a soluble lime. The drift is now crosscutting the beds, so a change in the limestone lime-stone may soon be expected. The study of the structure of the Emma Copper Cop-per property and adjoining mines has shown that v In detail the smaller faults have made the geology seemingly complex. In the larger aspect the geology is quite simple. It has been found that the orebodies which produced millions In the early days are all included includ-ed in certain strata the soluble beds in a large block of limestone beds between two great faults. The two great faults, the Flagstaff and the Montezuma, which are roughly parallel, stand out as prominent features in the topography of the mountains and are traceable for miles by brecciated outcrops and vertical fault scarps. The fault scarps rise in places as vertical walls more than 100 feet high. It is between these two fault planes that the orebodies which have made the camp famous In the past were worked on upper levels. All of the orebodies, according to tho geologists' geolo-gists' observations, terminated when they ran Into the eastern or Montezuma fault plane. This fault plane is what puzzled the early miners. They had all been working to the west, in tho footwall side, whereas the continuation of tho orebodies, according to the geological survey just made, has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt to exist to the east of the Montezuma fault, in what is termed the hanging-wall side. The Herzig drift is heading directly for this point. The development work of the Emma Copper Company, with the exception of the Herzig drift, has been done chiefly along the Snow fault, a minor fault in importance, although rather large in size, which cuts across the mineralized section of the country lying between the Flagstaff to the west and the Montezuma fault plane to the east. Thus it forms an inverted "N." This fault, which is brecciated, cuts across the formation of the orebodies. The ore which has been struck from time to time along this fault plans has been found in small bunches in the drag, and in small faulted blocks of limestone adjacent to the fault. The Herzig drift was started out from the Snow fault along one of the minor faults to the east, but has now been turned northeast to intersect in-tersect the Montezuma fault and explore the hanging-wall side. The downthrow of the Montezuma fault to the east, according to a rough approximation, is from 350 to 500 feet, so that from the present workings I in the Herzig drift it will require several hundred feet of drifting to encounter the faulted section of the Vallejo orebody. There is a probability, however, how-ever, that a considerable block of the faulted portion por-tion of the famous Vallejo orebody will be encountered en-countered above the level of the present workings. work-ings. Excellent progress is being made with the geological ge-ological map. When this has proceeded a little further it will be a simple matter to tell just where the soluble beds, minor faults and fissures will bo encountered. Of course, unexpected things may happen, but these unexpected happenings . will be reduced to a minimum, thus saving considerable con-siderable expense in development. In fact, with the structural features of the property and the district thoroughly interpreted by a competent ge ologist, there is but little danger of error after a detailed study has been made. As the geologist says, the sooner all efforts are concentrated on one straight drift to the Montezuma fault, the sooner Emma Copper will become a big mine. This is now being expeditiously done. The Emma Copper Company has an issued capitalization cap-italization of in' the neighborhood of 900,000 shares. At around Friday's close, 43c bid, 46c asked, the valuation placed upon tho property is about $400,000, equal to only about four times the amount of money actually spent in development work in tho course of .the past fifteen months. Aided by the best engineering and geological talent obtainable, the management is developing the property on scientific lines, with a view to opening at depth one or more of the sensational orebodies which produced millions at or near tho surface and were thrown down by a fault in the neighborhood of 500 feet. For a long while development proceeded on the Tom Moore tunnel level, the deepest workings work-ings in the property. After a lapse of time the company's geologist and its engineer were able to correlate the showings on this level with those on other levels. Thus they determined . the direction di-rection in which the faulted orebodies were thrown and to what depth. Having done this, work is now being concentrated on reaching the exact spot where it has been determined the ore-bodies ore-bodies should be found. The prize is a big one. G. G. R. |