St. Paul daily globe., 1895-09-08
TURNED TO STONE
EFFECT OF CREEPING CLAY ON
WOOD IN THE COMsTOCK
MINES.
NOT FROM PETRIFACTION,
BUT FROM THE GREAT PRES
i, SURE DO THE TIMBERS BE-
COME HARD.
FORCE THAT is IRRESISTIBLE
ing Earth in the COmstOck
Mines.

There is but one mine in the world
that has ever shown through the
natural action of the drift how
thoroughly nature can compress
wood, and that mine is the old Con-
solidated, in the Comstock lode, Jim
Fairs pet and the mine that holds
the record for quartz ore, says the
San Francisco Chronicle.
In half a dozen offices in this city
there are small slabs, 4X10 inches,
that have for some time puzzled
workers in wood. Every time man
who knows anything about wood is
shown one of the slabs and asked to
say what kind Of wood it is, as a
rule he shutters and stammers and
hesitates and is lost.
It has the principal properties of
so many different kinds of wood that
he does not know just what forest
Should be blamed for it's birth. AS
a fact it is Sierra Nevada pine, and
it's compression is due to the fact
that several million tons of super
f1uouS earth have been pressing upon
it, although not for any very long
time, but with so great a force that
pieces of wood seventeen inches
four inches in width, and the fibers
so closely crowded together that
when polished it seems much more
like stone than wood.
All the history of the Comstock
lode, governed and regulated as it
Francisco, is peculiar, but of all the
stories in the mines of this lode there
is none more peculiar than the"creep-
ing clay" and the compressed tim
bers. From 1874 until 1877 the Big
Bonanza was worked down to a
1,5OO-foot level, but at LOO feet they
stopped for awhile, and concluded to
drift off to the east. This brought
them to position where a large
portion of a side of a mountain was
pressing upon the quartz bed. There
was a body of ore, shaped like a
watermelon and in size equal to
about four Palace hotels. 1t was
this ore that made the fortunes of
SO many men, and to get it out re-
quired particularly skillful engineer
ing. There was a wall running down
at an angle of about As degrees, and
this wall marked the limits of the
loose earth which contained this
watermelon of ore, and this same
loose earth was continually moving.
Immediately surrounding the lump
of ore was clay, and this clay so
moved and crept in the natural proc
ess of natures action that by the min
ers it was called creeping clay" and
watched continually. So irresistible was
it's force that nothing could stand
against it.
From the 1,1OO-foot level the drift
was set in toward this body of ore.
There was a gallery where the car
ran along for the taking out of the
ore and from this gallery ran the
smaller drifts. Above, below and on
the sides of these smaller drifts there
were heavy timbers of Nebraska pine.
There was between the timbers a
space of about on the average feet
in height and in width. These were
square sets, and it was these timbers
that, by the action of the loose earth
around them, were so compressed that
pieces of them look more like stone
than wood.
At one time, about 1887, the engin-
eers of the Nevada mine believed that
they almost reached the limitation of
the Big Bonanza ore. So they went
back to the main shaft and sank down
to the 1,0OO-foot level, working, as they
afterwards found, below this eccen-
trio deposit on the side of Mount Da-
wilson. Finding that they were strik-
ing no pay dirt, they went back to the
1,1O0-foot level to rework the Big Bo-
nanza.
1t was then that this compressed tim
her was found for the first time, SO
far as is generally known, in the his