Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-09-18
THE GREAT CGUR DALENE.
Preuseted To be a Second California
when the Bed.ssOck OF the WASH
shall BE Tapped

A correspondent OF the Portland tOrJ
Ners, practical, level-headed mining
man, writes that journal regarding the
Ceur d lene country az follows:
All tina. IS wanted in Ceur d'Alene to-
dav to bring unparalleled success and
endless capital to Murray, immense BUSH
ness TO Spokane, the Northern Pacific
Railroad and Portland, is a tunnel run
from Dream Gulch to tap the bedrock OF
the wash and the California system OF
drifting. At this point | saw men carry
ing gravel in bags on their backs from
the rim of the hill four hundred feet down
| to the creek and make s. day TO the
man with a rocker. Ii with such q
ridiculous and contemplate method OF
working men could make 50 day, what
would they make, or rather what would
they not make, if the claim was put IN
proper drifting form? 1t is at this point,
the WeDfoot Company, sluicing IN Dream
Gulch, took out twenty pounds OF gold
two weeks in succession, or forty pounds
for the fortnight during my visit, at an ex-
pense of about $500. II hill drifting were
thoroughly inaugurated round Murray,
the Weld of gold every week would be
approaching it would be denounced as a
lunatic. At present, grand as the weekly
returns are, for amount of ground washed,
the mines are not half worked nor the
district half prospected. The tunneling
system in the hills would also do away
with the evils of the twenty-acre claim
system which prevails on the streams
The twenty-acre idea, when first sug-
gested in California was never Intended
to apply to purely placer diggings; it was
intended for quartz and hydraulic mining
alone. 1t is now the national law, adj
nit, but l doubt if true prosperity can
come to any camp where the placer mines
embrace so many acres to the exclusion
of so many men, 50 much work and so
much capital Small claims like small
farms, are the real basis of prosperity.
If man be familiar with this mighty
product of nature, this great gravel
mountain wash, that has intersected the
continent, where it is distinctly developed
at intervals, he is familiar with it in all
places-that is, if the formation be well
defined and the rock primitive, as at
Ceur d'Alene, he may, by comparison
with developments at other places, safely
predict success at that particular point,
for under such circumstances the wash
has never failed when properly opened
and skillfully worked. 1t may be always
taken for granted as q rule, that if the
gulches are rich the hills will prove rich.
/ cannot recall a single exception to this
rule, either in Montana or California,
when developments have been matured.
Nature never changes her laws to suit
mans wants or whims, and in the lorna
! ton OF this great gravel belt, as in the
organic mineral formations-gold, silver
and copper-her laws are eternal. When
opened and worked under & proper sys-
tenn, the hill gold deposits will make
Murray eventually another Eureka, North
Bloomfield, Cherokee, French Camp,
Little York, Dutch Flat and Little Run,
OF California Not before Who will be
the first to inaugurate this great ela?
Finally, this is not speculative article
written for effect. Its truthfulness will
be recognized at once by every practical
miner familiar with our gravel deposits.
During the last thirty years man has be-
come familiar with everything relating TO
this gravel formation, except its origin,
and that he will never know. Where it
first started what power formed its enor
nous channel how water was accumu-
lated in sufficient quantities to fill it with
gravel; how more recent rivers after
wards cut into it at different points; how
mountains were overturned and quartz
lodges crushed to powder to enrich it with
gold in such large pieces and quantities as
have been found of late years, are among
the many profound mysteries of crea-
ton that man cannot understand and
probably never will, for the power to
do so is beyond our human faculties. But
still this gravel deposit exists; most at
tractive study in all its relations-a mon
ument OF mystery with other things in
this creation allotted to man. Well, so
long as we are permitted to extract and
enjoy its riches let us be content, and at
the same time honor the brave old miners
OF California who have taught us so
much OF this prehistoric resting place of
gold. Occur d'Alene, like California
thirty years ago, is now undergoing her
preliminary lessons in mining. When
her gulches are worked out, when new
men, new ideas, new appliances come to
her, as come they will, with the other
mining regions now opening up, she will
help to made the great northwest equal
to California