Arizona republican., 1899-02-13
THE BICYCLE STORE.
 TEMPE, ARIZONA.
MONTANA's ICE MINE.
How Nature Stores It in Winter and
 Keeps It in Summer.

Keeps It in Summer.
 Seven miles to the north and a little
 to the east of the Cheyenne Indian
 agency in Custer county, Mon, is a
 well filled with ice that excites much
 curiosity among the ranchers and cat
 tlemen of that section. Every cow
 boy who visits the we'll has much to
 tell and invariably advances his own
 explanation. Many ingenious theo-
 ries are given which tend to indicate
 that mankind of all degrees of scien-
 tific knowledge put forth an effort to find the origin of things; however, they all agree that the ice forms in the
 well during the summer and that it ac- tually 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- eled great distances to witness the for mation of icicles during the hot wealth CT of July.
 This well is within a few hundred feet of the summit of the Little Wolf mountains, on the north slope, at the very beginning of Greenleaf creek, which empties into Rosebud eight miles from where the Rosebud joins the Yellowstone river This portion of the mountains is covered with a growth of tall pines
 Fourteen years ago three men pros pecting for silver, mistaking certain colors in the rocks, began sinking a shaft; at fifteen feet it was disagree ably cold; at twenty feet the cold had increased so rapidly that they were thoroughly frightened. They could feel currents of cold air rushing up from the crevices in the rock they imagined they were digging into some mysterious underground cavern; they had heard just enough of wonderful adventures of digging into caves and underground lakes, and being alone in this wilderness, where the very still ness permitted the ears to hear and the mind to imagine all manner of grue- some powers hid beneath the rock, so thoroughly filled them with the fear of impending danger that they abandon ed the work which has since gained such renOWn.
 The summits of Little Wolf noun tains are covered with scoria, which has all the appearance and texture of a good grade of tiling. It is usually red, but varies in color through all the shades down to black. These varying cc1ors give the beautiful tints to the thousands of buttes throughout the band lands. In comparatively recent geological times vast beds of Ignite ccal were formed over the eastern half of Montana, extending into western Dakota. The burning of these beds of coal was the beginning of the bad land formation. The fine deposits of clay above the coal were burned as brick are burned in kiln and formed the scoria. Where the heat was great CT and rock and sand were present it melted and mixed with the coal and ash, forming 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 cinders, it broke into small divisions prOmiscuouSly down into the pits thus formed Volcanic ash is found scattered over the Little Wolf noun tains and the eastern portion of Mon tana It must have drifted with the wind from powerful eruptions in the Rocky mountains, as there are no in dications of any volcanic action in the vicinity of the ice well. The Little 1 Wolf mountains are merely a rough | range of buttes apparently of the same origin as all the bad land buttes. Their | summits, towering above all the other buttes, have given them the name of mountains but they are only of slight 1y over 4,000 feet altitude
 If ice were to be put into the we'll | during the winter it would keep | throughout the summer nearly as well | as if stored away in ordinary ice | houses. By chance nature has formed | almost the identical conditions that | man has made use of to preserve ice throughout the hot weather. The shaft is the cavity in which to store the ice; the volcanic ash, filling into the open space between the loosely piled rock, serves the purpose of sawdust in keep ing out the warm draughts of air; the altitude and the north slope are favor able to the preservation of the ice; tall. dense forest prevents the heating Of the surface rock by the direct rays of the sun: the rocks are too porous for the water to soak up, so to speak, from beneath; the facts are that in many places near the tops of the buttes, on the sides where the rocks have fallen loosely together, they are perfectly dry for many feet below the surface, being moistened by the winter snow and rain as it may fall and run down from above.
 During the winter the well is nearly filled with snow; enough water from the early spring rains finds it's way 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 melted by the heat of the summer but does not begin to melt until the sum- mer is half over. In the early part of the summer it is still freezing in the