The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-10-09

might as well be sixty, for the interven-
Ing country is almost impossible afoot,
and the ore trains do not run for the
convenience of the 400 fellows that form
! & hillside colony Of typical miners
Tough, hearty Representatives of the
class that delve in the bosom of the
earth In search of her riches at so much
| day, while the owners who furnish the
/ Capital for the enterprise reap the boun-
tifgl profits that are the reward Of great
@f business training and superior advan-
{ages of education and position
What the Mo9ntain Copper Copper company ON
p per- say, may be repeated on varying
scale in adjacent parts of Shasta county
and in Trinity and Mendocino count es,
ping Of IA wonderful ledge that, shows it
self in places extending from the eastern
side, of the Sacramento river westward
| past KesWick to The Pacific ocean. But t
Some 5 small oipi oafaflons are being CON
Quoted with this end in distant view. Last
year the entire esdp product Of Ca 20
Of that amount came from the Iron noun
tain mine, where work is conducted on
big scale and results in the production of
the greatest amount of copper from any
one place on the Pacific coast.
The Englishmen did not perfect their
plant without meeting with discourage
ments and reverses. At first there was
the great problem Of transportation. They
had nine at an altitude of 1900 feet and
no possible room In the crowded. up-tllted
available space that might aiggs be used for q
smelling plant was 1850 feet below and
nearly ten miles away by the steepest per
MISSILE system of winding grades. A
wagon road could not be thought Of; lUO0
tons of ore day would have to be trans
ported. So railroad was surveyed and
built. 1t twists and turns upon itself,
goes over trestles across steep gorges N
one place forms a remarkable loop in
crowded space and in another goes
through a tunnel, but. always it keeps
curvng, every other rail having bend IN
1t, and at no place on the run can the Ut
| tie cars be found aligned. AS the Royal
Sunday when he rode over it and then
conned his; pocket, d :ctonary: to get the
right English woi'd: 1T is one 1mpuden,tt
| pieee4ef engineering9s so audacious bold.
And he repeated his. observation when the
! little train began hurriedly squirm ng
down grade on the return trip from the
mine and furehed +round the innumerable
curves so fast that the fall seemed more
than the actual 1913 feet to the mile. Steep
and fearful as it is, the road has never
had a fatal accident, though a few days
tunnel on the down grade and missing the
high trestle, plunged forty feet plump
into the bottom of the gorge Iher mere are ar
| tie locomotives, and they are. operated by
seven crews, with seven engineers, seven
| firemen and seven conductors.
i The railroad was not the most trying
problem that presented itself. Great
! worry and expense We're occasioned IN eX-
| perimenting upon methods for reducing
| the ore down at the smelters. The pyrlt
process was tried and failed. Then an eX-
| pert was imported from the. copper smell
tiers at Butte, Mont, and better results
were attained. Great roasting kilns of
! heavy masonry, with collecting tunnels
| caused such heat that the kilns cracked
and the concentration Of sulphurous
! fumes was more than the worlNmen could
| endure. So the kilns were abandoned for
| the present method of roasting in the
| open air in long gravelike mounds at
! distance from the machine shops and
! Smelters.
After being roasted in the open the ore
! passes through a complicated process in
| the smelters and comes out in fiery
| liquid form. the lower and heavier part
way and the surface molten leu being
! allowed to flow into big, gushing stream
! of water pumped from the river The chill
! graduates the waste metal. 1t collects
gorge near by, from which it is continual
| ly hoisted UP into small box cars and
! drawn out by the locomotive to increase
| the width of dump that is slowly filling
! the canyon and forming lever space
about the buildings. But the water flows
| back into the river, laden with chemicals
that in time must certainly destroy the
marine life in the Sacramento Copper
| SmelterS are no reSpecterS or surrounding
| life, and it is well that this one is located
| at distance from agricultural lands ana
valuable timber
Keswick and the Mountain Copper COM
pany and the Iron Mountain mine are
| three names for what amounts to much
| ton and the mine are intimately asso-
| ciated and together they form one of the
most important lessons in California $
| great mineral possibilities.