Arizona republican., 1899-06-03
The Earth in the Big Bug Dis
 triCt Charged With It.
SOME PLACER WORKING
A Brief Description Of inc Onyx QuarrieS Which Now, That the Prescott Eastern Is Built, Brings inc Product Within Easy Reach of inc Market.

Mayer, Ariz., June 1-(Special cor
 respcndence of The Republican. )-Op- | pCrtunities for successful enterprises
 and profitable investments are, since the advent of the railroad, so numer-
 ous around here that it is difficult to leave and feel that so much remains unsaid. But, as a sample. a visit made
 on Saturday afternoon last to a place 1 about two miles up the creek from Mayer is instructive.
 I heard that some placer work was being done there and arrived just in
 time to see the cleanup and in the in-
 terest of your readers I then felt bound
 to make friends with the operators and follow them to their shack, where I
 saw the amalgam retorted and the gold
 weighed. It turned out four and a half
 ounces one pennyweight-the value at
 SIS per ounce being s7660. This rep
 resented four days and a half of work
 for two men and is not half a bad
 showing. On the previous Saturday
 when a full weeks work had been done
 the result was S10S. The pay dirt is
 hauled from distance not exceeding
 half a mile and all the appliances are
 a sluice box about forty feet in length,
 a rocker and couple of pans.
 The operator, a MT. Swartz, an old
 miner who knows every gold producing
 district in the states and who is the first man I have met out here who has
 covered pretty well the same ground as I did cn the Clearwater, Snake and
 Salmon rivers during my rambles in
 Idaho, had nothing to. conceal and most kindly gave me all the qRforma-
 tion I asked for found that from the quantity of dirt hauled and sluiced for the four days and a half the ground
 pays upwards of $2 ger cubic yard and some of it, MT. Swartz says, carries as much as from S5 to $6 per yard, but now comes the astounding part of the story. There are no less than 1900 acres of this ground (close to the rail- road) and the placer deposit is in some places thirty feet in depth-and if this is not a proposition that would make hydraulicer's mouth water I never saw or heard of cne During an excep- tionaily dry season like the present the supply of water is somewhat short, but in an ordinary season, I am tod, there is enough to do great deal of work and lots more to be developed at no very great cost.
 The De Lamar people are after this property, it being their intention to work it with steam shovels and other modern appliances. Two of their en- gineers have reported on it Gone of them is here now) and the deal is ex- pected to be closed almost immedi- ately. But there being apparently nc end to the mineral wealth of this sec tion of Yavapai county I am assured by people who ought to know tha. there is plenty of equally rich placer ground lower down the creek.
 Eighteen miles south of Mayer is the Richenbar gold mine, consisting Of four claims, the Gold Note, Olympia. Center and Surprise. There are three shafts, each of them 2s5 feet Aown. and two levels with 400 feet Of develop ment and one with 250 feet.
 The ores are iron sulphides which carry the values and the ledge at the bottom of the shaft and in the levels is twenty-four feet wide, the walls net having been seen yet. Scarcely any stoping has been done and with the work now open upwards of 12,OOO tons of ore which assays from $12.6O to s1515 per ton could be won.
 At depth of 100 feet is a prospect ing shaft on this property and there Is ledge of four feet in width and 300 tons taken from this shaft assayed BIS and 200 tons $36 per ton. This ore was free above the water level and the sulphides are just coming in.
 Before the Prescott & Eastern was it meant a haul of forty six miles to get the concentrates to a and the owner has stuck to .hese claims for twenty-two years waiting fer his chance. Now it has come and some eastern people have m option Cn the, ,Richenbar mine whicn is likely to be in full work very shortly.
 I mentioned in a recent letter the immense onyx quarries at Mayer. Yes erday I called upon Mir Dan Bowen, who holds four claims upon this de- 1Csit-about sixty acres-practically all onyx. He tells me the beds are aiculated to be 100 feet at least in thickness and some of them more. The pecimens he showed me were beauti- ul beyond description. Every color nd combination of color that can de-