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Show Tunneling Under Utah's Mountains For Ore I ' - f .i , " - Jt ? 1 ' . ' , 4 ' f VvY I ti-'ftift iiifiitlTiTrir lir rtm n irm r Emphat Ic" testimony that I'tah's minlris; imlustry faces tlie future with the problem of deep expensive development can I).' had from tlio experiences of the National Tunnel & Mines company, which is now entering a period of lai'Ke scale production at It properties in th Bingham district. After nearly four years of development de-velopment anil the expenditure of nearly f l.CUU.Oiii) iho in'ne Is just ih.'.v beKinniu.; to yield ores from Rreat depth. Years a so the upper levels of thn Nathm:'.l Tunnel, which ls a cnnsoliila:lon of Utah Apex and Utah Delaware properties, prop-erties, was virtually worked out. Larue deposits of low pradu ore, however, were known to exlu beltTw tho water level at about laiij feet down to the moo foot level. The expense cf hoisting the ore and wasto to the surface together with the cost of pumping Hie water, wa-ter, made mining of tho ore prohibitive. pro-hibitive. In order to solve this problem tho company drove a Initio drain-age drain-age and transportation tunnel from Tooelo on the west of Bingham, a distance of 4'i miles to tho National Na-tional Tunnel property. The tunnel tun-nel encountered the Utah Apex shaft at a depth of 2500 feet, thereby there-by draining a large area of the mine aud eliminating much of the hoisting expense. Such mining and prospecting Is a far-cry from Urn early days of western mining when miny deposits de-posits of valuable ore were found at or near the grass roots. Thus tho fuiii. it of Utah's mining industry seems to lie In deeper and more exhaustive development of Utah's milting districts. During the past 80 years Utah's principal mining districts of Bingham, Park City, Tintlc, Alta and Heaver county, have yielded In tho neighborhood of two billion dollars dol-lars worth of ore. Their lives have been much longer than the ordinary mining districts and needless to say most of the easily obtainable ores have been mined. The future of Utah's mining should be jealously guarded and encouraged us the problems are mounting with the extraction of eai.h pound of ore. |