The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1899-01-26
A MONTANA ICE MINE.
In Which the Ice Forms in Summer
and Thaws Out in
Winter.

Juster county, Mont, Is well nlleu
with ice that eXcites much curiosity
among the ranchers and cattle men of
hat section. Every cowboy who visits
he well has much to tell and invariably
advances his own explanation. Many
ingenious theories are given which tend
to indicate that mankind of all degrees
Of scientific knowledge put forth an eff
fort to find the origin of things; how
ever. they all agree that the ice forms
In the well during the summer and that
it actually thaws during the winter.
This apparent contradiction of the
natural laws that govern the outside
world has carried the fame of this well
for miles around, and people have trav-
| sled great distances to witness the for
nation of icicles during the hot wealth.
er of July.
This well is within few hundred
| feet of the summit of the Little Wolf
FOUNTAINS, on the north slope, at the
very beginning of Greenleaf creek,
which empties into the Rosebud eight
miles below and about so miles from
where the Rosebud joins the Yellow
stone river. This portion of the noun
tins is covered with dense growth of
tall pines.
| Fourteen years ago three men pros
! pecting for silver installing certain
colors in the rocks, began sinking
| shaft; at Is feet it was disagreeably
| cold; at 20 feet the cold had increased
so rapidly that they were thoroughly
frightened. They could feel currents
Of colo air rushing up from the crevices
in the rock; they imagined they were
digging into some mysterious UNDER
ground cavern; they had heard just
enough of wonderful adventures of dig
ging into caves and underground lakes,
and being alone in this wilderness
where the very stiffness permitted the
ears to hear and the mind to imagine
all manner of grewsome powers hid
beneath the rock, so thoroughly filled
them with the fear of impending dam
ger that they abandoned the work,
which has since gained such renown.
The submits of the Little Wolf
mountains are covered with scoria,
which has all the appearance and tex
ture of good grade of thing. 1t is
usually red, but varies in color through
all the shades down to black. These
varying colors give the beautiful tlnts
to the thousands of buttes throughout
the bad lands. In comparatively recent
geological times vast beds of Ignite
coal were formed over the eastern half
of Montana extending into western
| Dakota. The burning of the beds of
coal was the beginning OF the bad-land
| formations; the fine deposits of clay
above the coal were burned as brick
are burned in a kiln and formed the
scoria; where the heat was greater and
rock or sand was present it melted and
mixed with the coal and coal ash, form
| ing large cinder-like rocks, which are
sometimes mistaken for lava.
AS the coal burned out from beneath
| the clay, now baked into scoria and
melted into cinGers, broke into small
divisions and fell promiEcuously down
into the pits thus formed. Volcanic ash
is found scattered over the Little Wolf
mountains and the eastern portion of
Montana. 1t must have drifted with
the wind from powerful eruptions in
indications of any volcanic action in the
vicinity of the ice well. The Little Wolf
mountains are merely a high range of
| buttes apparently of the same origin
| as all the bad land buttes. Their sum-
mits, towering above all the other
| buttes, has given them the name of
mountains, but they are only of slight
| IL over 600 feet altitude
During the winter the well is nearly
filed with snow. Enough water from
| the ea.ly spring rains finds its way
| through between the rocks to mix with
| the snow and freeze into one solid mass
of ice The ice in the well is formed by
the cold of the winter season, but does
not begin to form sometimes till the
| winter is half gone. In turn it is melt
ed by the heat of the summer, but does
| not begin to melt until the summer is
half over. In the early part of the sum-
mer it is still freezing in the well, and
| during the first half of the winter it is
still melting. The well acts as a refrig-
| orator. 1t receives the heat slowly, and
then gives it of just as slowly. If the
earth received and gave off heat rapid
| ly, the hottest weather would be in
| June and the coolest in December-in
| fact the seasons follow nearly month
behind the sun. The conditions sur
rounding the ice well cause it to fol-
| low the seasons from six to eight weeks
| later.
1t is a fact that if on hot day you
| walk rapidly into the cave to where the
| ice is, it feels as though a strong cur
rent of cold air were blowing against
your face. The sensation is so decid-
| eddy real that it requires careful
demonstration to prove to the con-
.rary, and even then it almost seems as
| I.3pgh the demonstration had been a
mistake. 1t can be easily tested by us
| ing smoke, or better still, a rather
heavy colored glass. Again. if one
should stand without the entrance to
| the cave on very warm day, near
| enough to feel any draft that may be
| stirring, none can be felt coming from
| the cave. If one should stand directly