The San Francisco call., 1899-09-11
MINERS HOSPITALITY,
DEL N0R1E TO DESERT.
MINING THE RIVERS.
WHY MINE: JUMPERS LOST.

came with the copper boom, and hunting
and digging for copper is starting a more
lively hunt for gold.
THE mineral resources of the county
are as yet an unknown quantity" says
the Del Norte Record From its earliest
settlement mining has been carried on
In small way for gold, with good profit
In many instances. That it could be made
cannot be disputed Copper mining was
also followed in the early history of the
county, and thousands of dollars were
spent and hundreds of men employed in
the Low Divide country, about ten miles
from the seacoast, back of Smith River
Valley The high freight rates prevail
ing, coupled with the long distance which
the ores had to be taken for treatment,
caused this industry TO close up TO with
in the present year. Now there are many
leads, and one or two mines are shipping
ore to San Francisco for smelling pur-
poses. Present indications are that the
copper interests of the county will be
one of the most remunerattve within a
short time
The Union copper mine up there is TAX
ing five tons a day from a ledge several
feet wide and the last shipment to Selby's
by steamer yielded 19 per cent copper.
Other copper mines are developed about
to the shipping point and important cop
per enterprises are likely to attend a
sustained copper demand. A number of
gold properties are being developed and
prospecting Is lively.
Along and across the klamath and the
Trinity to the eastward in Siskiyou and
Trinity and then in Shasta is the liveli-
est, biggest. least developed and probably
the most promising mining region of the
State. Prospectors swarm over the thou
sands of square miles of that great
broken, wooded and mineralized territory
Through this big region there are hun
dreds of mines recently discovered and
developed to a promise of value and even
richness by men without capital, pegging
away with drill and often paying ex-
penses with a spring g-pull mortar or an
arraster, or by small shipments of ore
to smelters. Notes of these small strikes
and developments fill local papers con-
stantly.
But capital is rapidly going into this
inviting field where prospects are not,
as a rule, held so high as in well-deVel-
oped districts Many investments on the
scale of few thousands have been made
this year in quartz, copper, hydraulic and
dredging propositions and some will
reach into the hundreds of thousands.
The next two years promises to see the
development of some very big operations
Captain de Lamar. the millionaire oper-
ator, recently bought and began to fur
ther develop the Bully Hill group of cop
per claims and where the Afterthought
and other copper properties are undergo
ing active exploration by Eastern capt.
talists. So great and rich bodies of cop
per have been developed by the Mountain
Copper Company in Iron Mountain, and
so promising are the indications that as
great or greater ore bodies exist along
that twenty-five mile copper belt, that
the outlook is promising for the erection
of more great SmelterS and the growth or
a mining camp that will be a second
Butte City. California seems about TO
leap to high rank among the copper pro-
ducing States.
All sorts of river dredging propositions
are floating about between wind and
water" When the 49ers and '55ers and
the rest of them got through with the
lower courses of the golden rivers and
went away, the recent and ancient
beds of the streams which could
not be reached or prof1tably worked by
fluming, wing damming, etc, still kept
their gold and then through long years
the hydraulic and other miners In the
mountains sent down millions OF CUBIC
yards of tailings carrying gold that en-
riched further these river beds. NOW
when long experiment has developed pig
machines that will reach down forty feet
and in favorable ground work Z5OO cuplC
Yards a day for cents a cubic yard, and
when the financial success of modern gold
dredges has been recently demonstrated
long abandoned present river bottoms and
to the river benches that plank them.
The klamath, Trinity, Feather, Yuba,
American. Stanislaus and Iuolumne rlV-
and dredges are apt to rapidly multiply.
The Feather, near Oroville, and the
Yuba, near Marysville, are the chief CEN
ters Of dredging now. and several dredges
are in operation with more building and
planned. The Continental Dredging Com
pany is building at Oroville one larger
two new ones have just been given San
Francisco firm. George Evans will build
one this winter. Next month all the
dredges about Oroville will substitute
aya ~;n For or m
The operation of these dredges which
simply stack their tailings behind them
as they proceed has inspired the Marys
Vile Democrat to sound d warning that
recalls the old anti-debris opposition to
the hydraulic miners. The Democrat
thinks the dredges will work damage by
shoaling further the streams.
This dredging industry seems to be
bringing an interesting legal question to
the front. Long stretches of the bed of
the Feather are being located as placer
where all land along the bank is privately
owned. 1t. is asserted on one hand that
an owners rights on the bank tof
stream On the other hand ownership is
asserted to stop at the meander lines as
declared by Government surveys. If a
asserted by Attorney A. H. Ricketts, in
The Call recently, the property of the
State? If so Federal location laws do not
apply.
Southern Californa affords plenty of
mining news these days chiefly concern
ing oil and gold The Randsburg Miner
says; "Randsburg has again assumed it's
old-time activeness and people are now
rolling in by the bus loads. Mine deal
ers and mine owners are numerous and
full of business Money is plenty and
easy and every one seems to be satisfied
that they are In Randsburg.
San Diego County has another new dis
covery In Bear Valley argentferous ga
lena assaying IA per cent lead, 10 ounces
There is great interest in the discovery
Santa Barbara County is credited by
report with a subterranean lake of
liquid asphaltum," " near Carpenteria. It
was struck in drilling an oil we'll at 1850
feet, is like soft mush'' and has risen
160 feet in the pipe. At last accounts the
operators couldn't either get the stuff out
or keep on boring