The Bozeman weekly chronicle. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1883-1889, 1883-08-29

| which TO open mines properly ana pu
up the necessary slnelters, concentrations
etc. Thus far your correspondent ha
heard of but one smelter in this county
which by the way is half as large as tn,
State of Wisconsin Nearly all the minel
in this area are owned in Bozeman and
the Gallatin valley. If you will allow
me to take you for little trip with my
pencil you may be enabled to form some
idea of the mineral interest here, which
is always passed by with the general re.
mark of "yery rich." SIX miles away to
the south and in plain view from the
city resident of Bozeman found an out
crop Of silver and copper right on the
ridge Of wooded mountain last spring.
Lately he concluded to sink on the vein,
and much to his surprise found at a
depth of fifteen feet that he had true
fssure vein five feet wide and running
from $40 to $ll0 in silver, with twenty
two per cent Of copper. The vein is
traced on the surface by outcrops for
5000 feet. A local party will put 5000
into the mine for half.interest as de-
veloping fund. Locations on rich pros
| poets are made all along this mountain,
but the above is the deepest shaft on it.
RICH LOCATION.
Now take the jump over hundreds of
locations CA probably good veins, thirty
five miles east of north and we strike a
camp that has never been mentioned in
print. Here are forty locations all show
ing fine outcrops. One of them has a
shaft 5xlO feet and fifty feet deep on the
vein. Everything within the walls is
ore, and here you find copper and silver
in all their beautiful tints ia abundance.
Once in while a pocket of galena is
struck in the vein, but this only runs in
pockets and carries small quantities of
silver. On the dump are 800 tons of ore,
assaying all the way from $24 in silver
and twenty per cent in copper to 1926 in
silver and eighty per cent copper to the
ton. There is no smelter within 100
miles of these mines, and the miners
amusc themselves by dropping ore on a
wood fire, and watching the copper and
silver smelt out in great beads in this
light head. Across the range once more,
to the south twenty-eight miles, we drop
in on Mill creek, tributary of the upper
Yellowstone. Just at the mouth of the
canyon five large outcrops from ledges of
copper and silver are in plain sight.
These outcrops are from three to six feet
wide, and run right up the steep face of
the mountain. The assays from the ore
in sight run from 90 to 40 per cent cop
per, and 500 to $4s silver, with rich traces
of gold. Up Mill creek forfourteen miles
we find locations on fine looking ore all
along. At the end of the trip we run..fdll
ON twenty or thirty prospects, the largest
Of which has a tunnel thirty-two feet
long on body Of ore four feet by eight
feet in extent. This is the galena, car
rying on an average $50 IN gold and silver.
On the other side of the gulch we find
ledge of white, soapy, decomposed min
eral, and as the temptation is strong, we
fill a miners gold pan with it and carry
to the river. We fill the pan with water,
shake it and smooth off the pebbles and
coarser material. The cold water makes
fingers ache, but we keep on washing the
painful Of dirt till at last we give it little
circular shake and hold it to the light,
after drawing Ur1 1rID u tire ware1
and (of course you shout, you are
"tender-foot") fully ten cents in fine gold
dust marks its golden way across the pan
like great gilt stride. The other mines
here show fine prospects, but nary
smelter within ninety miles.
= Back to the Yellowstone and four miles
up it we come to the Enigrant gulch and
river. Here the placer mines with their
sluices and drifts on bed rock stop us for
a little time, and we watch the miners
dumping gravel from the drift into the
sluices, where the gravel and drift is
driven by the rapid water through the
long boxes, and the gold dust is caught
by the rifles in the bottoms of them.
Every Saturday night they "clean up"
from $6 to s25 per day to the man. Just
below the present works, the Henry Viii
lard company have $50 acres of this placer
ground and will Use 10000 inches of
water from Mill creek to wrest the golden
grains from the rich gravel. As we enter
the canyon outcrops of gold quartz, gale
ma and copper, with representation"
work alone done on them, show up at
every turn. Placer ground, with the
sluice boxes, appears at the bed Of the
creek, but we climb up till we strike the
Great Eastern lode across which the
river runs. This vein, we find, is forty
feet wide between the walls and carries
galena, gold, silver and copper to the
aggregate value of from $500 to $500 to
the ton. Two miles further mp the gulcf
three men are at work on bed rock drift
ing under the river bed and driving their
shafts upward to the surface. The next
shaft will be eight feet from bed rock to
the surface. Three men have already
been crushed in this queer way Of work.
ing, but the pay dirt is very rich and the
temptation to glittering to be resisted.
Just here the path upward becomes mar
row, and we retrace our steps, though we
hear of rich veins still further up the
canyon.
As we reach the Yellowstone again the
tracklayers on the Park branch are Just
passing, and the new rails look like two
long black serpents trailing down the
valley. Thirty miles up the nver our
pencil flies rapidly, and we land at Bear
gulch, just this side of the entrance to
National Park. Here we find two or
three dozen locations and four mines
with good shafts down on the ore. One,
especially rich, deserves mentions. For
sixty feet the shaft follows the wall rock
down on the gold quartz vein and the
dump Is covered with the ore, one glance
at which sends a shiver through the
newspaper man of the party. We pick
up piece Of black ore, and pointing to
the yellow streaks nearly as large as our
AZ - ~, 4EF