OCR Text |
Show HOW BEAVER COUNTY STARTED UTAH MINING I iHorn Silver. $50,000,000 Mine I - i :f " ' " " -"t' : , at Frisco, Utah , -t t . -: 1 .. - I - sv.- i .. - " .V . mm y, Ji II !! 1 "j 11 1 " Mr f n"i1 1i niiiBir mim In -i 'i ilT .i.i '.r Jv......v.-. .-...-.-..ij ; :...v- . , . , By HARRY A. THOMPSON IT waa in Beaver county that the first metal mine in Utah was discovered. The find was made In 1854, seven years after the Mormon Mor-mon pioneers arrived. It was largely large-ly accidental. The pioneers were not looking for -nines, but where mineral was so obvious It could not be Ignored. From that day to this Its metals have made Beaver one of the most interesting sections sec-tions of the state. It has gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, manganese, man-ganese, bismuth and numerous rare minerals with unpronounceable names. The first mine was started and the first smelting furnace operated near the present site of Miners-j Miners-j ville. By 1920 no fewer than 15 mining districts had been organized and the name of Its greatest mine had been heard around the world. The original mine, the Lincoln, or Rollins, was found by Isaac - Grundy. Eight to twelve feet of lead-silver ore was exposed at the I surface. Grundy and his partners built a crude smelter and furnished lead for bullets and other simple purposes. The furnace soon waa abandoned, but the mine wag operated oper-ated intermittently and still ships ore. In 1875 the opening of th Horn Sliver made Beaver county the leading silver-lead producer of the state. The output of this mine has been computed at SO million dol-l lars. Found by three Itinerant prospectors 15 miles west of Milford, Mil-ford, It was purchased for a few thousand by Allen G. Campbell, Dennis Ryan, Matt. Cullen and A. Byram and, later, sold by them to Jay Cooke, a famous Philadelphia banker who had been reduced to poverty by the panic of 1873. Cooke agreed to pay 5 million for it and to secure a railroad. Its earnings and subsequent sale made him rich again. Riches of Horn Silver gave n new impetus to prospecting In all parts, of the county. Gold, silver, lead, copper and zinc were discovered discov-ered in combination or separately in different localities. In 1859, long before the Horn Silver strike, gold was mined in a series of caves near Minersville. The same metal has been produced with some success in the Newton, Beaver Lake and Fortuna districts. Poor men found encouragement in the Star district, southwest of Milford, where the deposits de-posits of lead and silver, exposed close to the surface, were mined cheaply. Beaver also scored as a copper producer. Newhouse, in the Preuss district, between 1905 and 1912, yielded 25,341,183 pounds of copper, cop-per, 9,959 ounces of gold and 224,-911 224,-911 ounces of silver. Other Beaver county mines in which copper occurs oc-curs in commercial quantities are the O. K., in the Beaver Lake district, dis-trict, and the Old Hickory, in the Rocky district. Better prices and improved methods of concentration give hope for revival of copper production in these localities. In recent years exploration and development have tended to concentrate con-centrate in the vicinity of the Horn Silver. Evidence that the rich veins of this mine reach out along the borders of a great monzonite uplift which broke through the sedimentaries, has induced the owners of the King David and Frisco Silver-Lead to spend thousands thou-sands of dollars in sinking and drifting. At the King David, six mineralized miner-alized veins, striking toward the Horn Silver, have been penetrated by a long crosscut to the north on the 750-foot level of the main working work-ing shaft. The most promising leads are being developed through a raise. Further west on the same zone, within less than 300 feet of the surface, the Frisco Silver-Lead has opened shoots of high-grade silver-lead ore from which many shipments have been made to the smelters. The breccia, or "shear" zone, 4200 feet in length and 500 feet wide, makes directly into the Horn Silver and apparently has secreted many veins and deposits of pay ore in its fractures. North and south of the Horn Silver activity is manifest in mines along a fault contact where the fault is crossed by east-west veins. One of these mines, located in 1878 as the Beaver Carbonate and now known as the Quailmetals, is credited with a total production of nearly a million mil-lion dollars. Reduction of their ores has always al-ways been a problem to many of the mines of Beaver county. The primitive lead furnace of Isaac Grundy was succeeded by a number num-ber of little smelters whose charcoal char-coal kilns served their turn until bettered railroad facilities made transportation to the large central smelteries practicable. Frisco, at one time, had two smelters which were operated when water wa8 available. At Newhouse a 1000-ton 1000-ton mill reduced the low grade copper cop-per ore to a concentrate during the boom days of the camp. For each ounce of silver Beaver has mined nearly 20 pounds of lead. Figures on non-ferrous metal production from 1SG0 to 1934, inclusive, in-clusive, record the lead at 453,422,-708 453,422,-708 pounds and silver at 23,354,296 ounces. Copper trails with 53,-946,296 53,-946,296 and zinc with 42,123,360 pounds. Gold, in the same period, was valued at $995,S18. The combined com-bined value of the five metals totals $55,684,038, derived from 3,-173,918 3,-173,918 tons of ore and concentrates. concen-trates. In 1930 the Beaver county districts dis-tricts earned $4S9,155. Production, which virtually ceased during the long metal depression, began to revive in 1935. Higher prices in 1936 and 1937 stimulated activity and Beaver, having "what it takes" to make mines, is in the picture again. |