The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-04-05
ELK CITY AND FLORENCE.
Big Placer Mining Enterprises in
Idaho.

The attention of the mining world
has been largely attracted for the past
two years to the quartz discoveries in
Elk City and Florence in Idaho
county, says the Statesman of Boise,
Ida, and a great deal of outside
| capital has been invested there on the
strength of the showings made. For
! the benefit of the Statesman's readers
a reporter was detailed to interview
/ Hon. A. F. Parker, a member of the
! board of university regents from Idaho
county. who is now in the city attend
! ing the meeting of the board. He is
also editor of the Idaho County Free
Press, one of the oldest established
newspapers in the state, and has him
self valuable mining interests in Elk
City and is otherwise well equipped
to speak with knowledge of the min
eraI resources of that isolated and little
known section in the heart Of the
state.
Replying TO a question put by the
reporter, Mr.. Parker said:
THE Elk CITY country is situated
on the western slope of the great Bit
ter Root divide in Idaho county. 1t
was the second placer camp discovered
in the northwest in 1860, Pierce City
being the first. and has Welded many
millions of dollars of placer gold. For
the ten wears between 1880 and 1890
the district was occupied almost ex-
clusiveIy by Chinese, who worked over
the old diggings. About 1887, when
Idaho was a territory and Willis
Sweet was Judge of the First judicial
district, Some white men from Occur
d Alene entered the camp, jumped the
best of the ground owned and worked
by the Chinese and took the matter
into the courts. Judge Sweet, in 1889,
decided that aliens could not hold
mining ground under the United
States mining laws, and there was soon
after a general exodus of celestials out
of the mining camps on both sides of
the Clearwater. Their places, how
ever. were speedily filled by white peo-
pie and the result has been distinctly
beneficial TO that section. Syndicates
of Chicago and Butte people have
taken hold of some of the best of the
old placer claims and are developing
the ancient channel of American
river, on which the old-time miners
have spent years of labor and fortunes
in money in attempting to bottom.
But it was too big an undertaking for
individual effort. Associated capital,
expended under the direction of scien-
tific mining engineers, was required to
carry the scheme to success. In 1895 a
Chicago company put in a hydraulic
elevator plant on american MIL, ana
last year they are reported to have
taken out $1,000 in gold per day. A
Butte company purchased last fall the
Buffalo hill placer property and have
kept large force of men at work all
winter putting in a bedrock fiume.
They used 100000 feet of lumber in
its construction. and have hauled in
over the snow 80 tons of iron pipe and
hydraulic equipment. The Ternan
hill property was also purchased
by Butte parties a few weeks ago and
with characteristic enterprise are go
ing ahead 10 open UP the ground and
equip it with up-to-date improve
ments. The Moose creek placers have
also passed into the hands of eastern
people, and las. fall they prospected
for and found an old channel carrying
the coarsest gold ever found in the Bit
ter Root country. The building of new
bitches has placed the new discovery
in position to be worked this season.
THE operations and expenditures of
these companies have infused new life
into placer mining enterprises all
that section, and the product
of gold from this source promises in a
few wears more to reach its oldtime
There are many tracts