The Newberry herald. [volume] (Newberry, S.C.) 1865-1884, 1882-08-31


25 cents for shave and 50 for a hair
cut. The Grand has in its day turn
ed away from 80 to 100 people day
over and above all it could accommo
date with lodgings. Leadville has
DeVer been particularly religious
place, and even in the days when
there was only one church to 10000
Inhabitants an audience of so worship
pers was about the average ! have
been told about the following notice
posted in the old church, but have
not seen it Please do not shoot the
orgaulst; be does his best
/ Iu the general character of the
place there has not been much change
from what it was from the first, ex-
cept that the evidences of hasts are
not so plentiful and the buildings are
better and more substantially built
and there is a little more of the at
mosphere Of permaueucy. But all
the details I might give would after all
afford the reader little idea of Lead
vile as it is, or its surroundings as
they appear to the actual observer.
Let one imagine himself penned up in
the widest fas,nesses of the Rocky
Mountains at an altitude of 10000
feet above the sea. He is literally on
the mountain tops. Yet far above
Leadville on every hand rise the bald
crowns of the snowy rauge-desolate,
bleak, and absolutely without vegeta-
tion of any kind. Here in the gul-
ches are forests Of pine and evergreen,
which extend far up the sides of the
adjacent peaks. But the timber line
is as strongly marked aud as clearly
cut on every side as if human hands
had been at work clearing away every
trace of tree or shrub along the line
CT a survey, aud as if the same hands
bad planed off the mountain summit
to the smoothness and baroness of
country school.yard. To the stran-
ger, coming from the luxuries and
comforts of civilization, LesdVille pre-
sents an aspect of unutterable desola-
ton. Approaching by the old stage
road, one of the first indications
which the stranger has that he is in the
vicinity of a city is the rude cemetery
which he passes at the lower end of
Chestnut street. It is gloomy,
cherries place, especially when seen
in the late twilight, aad is suggestive
of many tragedy in real life. Of
the several hundreds who have been
buried here, scores died among
strangers, leaving nothing by which
their friends in tho East might be
found or informed of their fate. The
little mounds arranged in rows be-
meath the few trees that have been
left standing are bare of grass, and
some of them are covered with the
dry brown needles that fell from the
pines in the early Spring. Plain
board slabs stand for head-stones ard
tell the brief story that will be for
gotten when they crumble and dis
appear. The graveyard of new
town is generally chilling, desolste
spot; that Of Leadville is superatively
80.
It was about the middle of the
summer in 1878 that the value of
Leadville as carbonate camp was
discovered. California Gulch Oh
which the present town stands was an
old mining camp, having been work.
ed for gold from 1859 to 1867, the
yield running down from $4,000, 900
in 1860 to about S150,000 in 1866,
when the diggings were abandoned.
In those days it is said the gold
miners caulked their log cabins with
what they supposed was mud, but
was really carbonate worth S400 a
ton. Who discovered the carbonate
is a disputed question, but there is no
doubt that W. H. Stevens. of Lake
Superior mining fame, resident of
Detroit, was one of the first, if not the
first, to undertake systematic mining
operations for silver in this camp.
Old Nevada and California miners
Fscofed at the idea of finding any.
thing of value in the carbonates.
They we're soft, not hard. They
we're pancake deposits not veins.
The oldest and wisest among them
had ueyer seen any metal extracted
from such stuff Still, Stevens had
his adherents. too. Numbers of men
swarmed upon the hills and began to
sink shafts. They we're speedily re-
warded. Of the results which fol,
lowed; the fabulous fortunes that
have been made and the vast interests
that have been developed, [ shall have