The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-10-13
HOW A GIRL FOUND GOLD
MARY VESTS STRUGGLES AND
TRIUMPHs IN THE SOUTHWEST.
How She Sold Her First Discovery
for $4,000 and Got "a Good Start
IA Mining Romance.

San Francisco Examiner.
Mary West is the brightest little woman
| in the whole southwest country. Alongside
of lot of the old-time prospectors-men
| who can always smell geld and silver ores
down in the earth-that girl has searched
out two gold lodges that have paid from
grass plots down, and in an abandoned
country, too. Then, all alone she has or
| ganized company where a lot of old
codgers couldn't interest dollar in a mine
| even if we had chunks of gold sticking out
| all over it.
| Besides, continued Col. John Hayes,
shes developed two of her claims already
into mighty profitable properties. You bet
she's hummer. There isn't woman alive
her equal. Why, that isn't luck. It's brains
| and pluck
| And Colonel Hayes. of FL Paso. knows
| what he is talking about when he discusses
mining. In his forty years of experience
he has made and lost three big fortunes in
the southwest. Like all the grizzled miners
down in northern Mexico and through the
territories. he doffs his hat to Mary West,
the blue-eyed, CHEEKY, rosy-cheeked young
| woman who has made prospecting a big
success and who to-day has $4,000 from
mines that she has located In places where
| none put she believed that gold could be
| hidden
She has faced perils among painted saw
ages in a cheerless. lonely region and had
| strange experiences amid scorching desert
| wastes, ghastly gulches and alkali-laden
| canons. Accompanied by her brother, she
tbe Maraa apf gold for four years among
! sullen. forsaken region. Footsore and
| weary she travelled over hundreds of square
| ing evidence of buried mineral wealth be-
meath the sun-baked soil She endured hum
| ger and thirst beneath a lurid sky for
weeks at time. She and her brother
| braved terrific, binding. suffoca ting sand
storms that killed their jackasses. They
nearly d! with cold while they camped
on ,i LOFTY mountain ain tops In mdwinter; Many
cactus and whitened powders, with no
human being. not even Indians, nearer than
fifty miles and with only the vault of
heaven as roof above them.
Time and again Mary Vests hopes wen.
soaring when she came upon an out-crop-
ping that indicated a buried ledge of fabu-
lous riches leading into a mountain side.
Then after weeks of manual labor with
pick and shovel. her enthusiasm was
crushed when she and her brother dug their
way to disappointment
Weary, sunburned and tattered, Mary
West climbed over crags. picked her way
across precipitous mountain trails, through
gulches and across burning deserts, test
ing producing rock here, scrutinizing a
canyon wall there.
Once she was so worn out by exposure
and hardship that she and her brother took
refuge for several weeks In the squalid
howell of Yaqui Indian family in the Santa
Maria mountains, some 10 miles from the
nearest white settler. All one winter they
| lived in a cabin on the Sonora side of the
mountains, subsisting chiefly on beans and
| pork, with occasional vegetables bought
earned at Nogales and Tombstone to keep
up the meager camp supplies, by assaying
| for prospectors who came there.
FORTUNE SMILED AT LAST.
But at last fortune smiled on Mary West
In May. 1897. on the eastern side OF the
Warren mountains, thirty-four miles north
west from NogaIes. the girl prospector
came upon an outcropping ledge of golden
ore that was well worth any ones while
Several months of manual toll uncovered
; the property TO show that it was valuable
That was the beginning of the Manzanita
mine, which has produced over $4,000 ir
gold UP to date, and has still promise OF
| more wealth.
Twenty-Five years ago Mary Vests
| burg silver mine in Leadville, Col She is
a native of GAINESVILLE, Wis, and the thir6
} born Of five children.
Our family lived within rifle shot OF
| the Little Pittsburg," said she the other
, day in the office of the Wisconsin mine
so 4 often ran over to the brick assay
office at the mine where father was busy
all day. l had the childish curiosity tC
know what he was about as he crushed
bits of ore from sample sacks all day lone
and performed various assays in the oven.
and crucibles He was born teacher. Be
fore i was even twelve years old / hac
, a rudimentary knowledge of what silver
: ores were worth and how simple assay:
were made. Father use to make privat,
, assays at home for gold and silver prospec
, tors. In the course of a few years / wa!
a helper to my father, and / came to know
thousand and one things about metal
lurgy and all mining prospectors shoulS
, know and few do know.
! When father died the family was lef
in debt and with no income. The olde
boys went TO Idaho and became teache
In mining camp in Colorado. Supportin,
/, my mother and myself. 1 saved enough 70
course in Denver school of mines durin,
! the summer vacation. / was the only cir
/: | student ever at the institution. After finish
ing course at Chicago University 1 be
, | came fully equipped woman metallurgist
) the first in the United States, 1 am told
Two years more of school teaching fol
lowed, then the news of the silver find
at Chloride, in Mojave county, Arizona
, | reached me. With my mother and younge
E brother l went there and opened an ASA.
: office. 1t was discouraging venture
| Miners had no faith in assayer in pet
ticoats and mining there was on the wane
"A grizzled old prospector trudged into m,
: office one day with sack of gold rock spec
: linens from over the San Lorenzo mountain
\ | and Maricopa desert. He had no money
y and he proposed that he and become min
ing partners, so my brother and 1 starte,
: | for the claim. Those specimens were al
| right, and the ledge was rich one but tn
property had been claimed by three me-
!, before my partner got there. We had n
u money for legal contest for ownership, an
i had no heart for stealing other people
property. So l quit But became pros
q pector right there. / interested in tn
region southwest of Tombstone. Ny knowI
edge of geology made me believe that tn
| same causes that formed the Congress an
. | Tombstone mines had operated similarl
among the lonely mountain ranges along tn
boundary of Arizona and Mexico.
;, KNEW SHE WOULD STRIKE IT.
'In the months and gears that foIlowe
lived a prospector's life. / knew 1 woul
n strike it some day, and / did. / discov
r cred the Manzanita mine. But 1 had TO 2
$ TO school teaching in Tombstone to get tn
n money TO develop it, ] saved every dol
o lar possible and in vacation time Joe an
: / went back. A shaft was sunk into tn
!, | ledge that season At thirty feet down tn
: property began to pay, we got ore that ra
= $50 ton, and there seemed to be lots of /,
r L had no capital, so cast about for buyer
Dozens OF men came and looked | set m
e price at $4,000. and / would have got Il
= too. If had the means to wait. Hiram w
$ DICK, Cochise county mining man. ey
t amined the claim, took a bond on it, an
II finally gave me $4,000.
J. I'll never forget the day We closed tn
deal in Tucson and | got paper and casl
i-nA Fr1nf To,