El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1900-06-26
AN ELUSIVE BONANZA
THE STORY OF THE LOST LODE OF
GORE RANGE.

How TenderfOOt Acc1dentally LIB.
covered This Wonderful Bank of
Gold and Why He Didn't Enjoy the
Richness Thereof.
They were telling mining stories In
the courthouse, and Dee Reese, the
lawyer. asked:
Did YOU ever hear of the lost lode
Of the Gore range"
The other lawyers sitting around
him said they had never heard OF 1t
and then waited for him to begin. Mr..
Reese borrowed fresh chew of tobac-
co and told this story:
Hundreds of experienced and mex
perienced miners as we'll have spent
! q great deal of time and money looking
for the lost lode of the Gore range,
and they are searching for it yet.
This famous mine was found and lost
in the fall of 1896. A party Of men
from Iowa visited Routt county, Colo,
| in the fall of 1896 on a hunting and
fishing trip. The party made its
Headquarters at Steamboat Springs.
In the latter part of October the party
moved up and went into camp on
| Rock creek, in the Gore range or
mountains, which runs through north
ern Colorado. One of the party was
q druggist, who had gone on the trip
| for his health. He knew nothing OF
mining. He had been warned by an
old miner before he left Iowa not to be
| fooled, as many a tenderfoot had been,
| by what is known as fools gold,' or
iron pyrites. So this druggist paid no
! attention to the rocks, but attended
strictly to his hunting and fishing.
xx-bi hr1n limo ri
deer he started a fine buck and fired at
him and wounded him. The buck fell,
| but got up and ran before the druggist
could get to him. Where he fell was
pool Of blood, which showed that he
| was badly wounded. The hunter trailed
him by the blood spots on the dead
| leaves and grass for a mile and there
| found where the buck had lain down
and then rising had gone on again. In
this way the chase continued until
| shutdown, and then the hunter, who
| was exhausted, sat down on an out
| cropping ledge of rocks to rest.
"In the enthusiasm of the chase he
had not noted which way he travelled,
and he realized that he was lost in the
heavily timbered mountains, with
night coming on. He knew it would
be useless to try and find the camp
that night, so he gathered a pile Of
dead limbs and kindled a fire against
the ledge of rocks and laid down with
his feet to the blaze and prepared to
sleep. While lying there he noticed
/ the rocks sparkled in the freight. He
| got up and examined it, supposing it
was the fools gold he had been warn
! ed against. But the rock looked SO
| pretty that he broke off several pieces
! and put them in the pocket of his
hunting coat, intending to carry them
| back to Iowa with him as curiosities:
The next day he wandered all the
! forenoon, and then found the Gore
| pass road over the range and followed
| it to the camp. That very afternoon
! a regular mountain SnowStorm began,
and the party broke camp, returned to
! Steamboat Springs and from there
| went east.
1.-The druggist, whose name l have
| forgotten, staid in Denver for a few
! days on his way to his home in Iowa.
| In the lobby of a hotel in Denver the
! talk drifted to mining, and the drug
! gist mentioned the specimens Of stone
| he had found and was taking home.
| An old miner never misses a chance to
! examine a specimen and in this group
/ in the hotel lobby was an old prospect
or. He asked to be shown the speci-
mems. The druggist went to his room,
| fished up the old hunting coat from
the bottom of his trunk and took out
the piece Of stone. The miner exam
| ined it closely and exclaimed:
| Man, that's the richest specimen
of gold bearing quartz 1 have ever
seem
1.-THE druggist thought at first that
he was being joked with, but at last
| the old miner induced him to take the
| specimens to Burlingame, the best as
sayer in Denver. Burlingame assayed
a piece Of the quartz and reported that
| it yielded gold at the rate Of $4,000 to
| the ton. The druggist was not salts
| fed. He submitted another piece of
| the quartz to another expert asSayer
| and got report that it yielded gold at
the rate of $4,000 to the ton.
1.-THE druggist returned at once to
! Steamboat Springs, but there was snow
| in the mountains. He went back to
| Iowa and returned to the Gore range
the next spring and has spent every
summer since then looking for the lost
! lode, and others have searched for it,
too, but no trace of it has been found
Kansas City Star.
Weighing the Baby.