The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1903-08-28
l GIRL FOUND GOLD.
tory Of Mary Vests Struggles and
THumphs in the South
west.
Tow She Sold Her First Discovery
for $4,000 and Got a Good
Start.
san Francisco Examiner.

San francisco Examiner.
Mary West is the brightest little woman
u the whole southwest country. Along
tde of lot of the old-time prospectors-
hen who can always smell gold and silver
hes down in the earth--that girl has
earched out two gold lodges that have
aid from grass roots down, and In an
dbandoned country, too. Then, all alone,
he has organized a company where lot
4 US old dodgers couldn't interest dol
pr in a mine even If we had chunks OF
1old sticking out all over it.
Besides" continued Colonel John
Hayes. she's developed two Of her claims
Ilready into mighty profitable properties.
gou bet she's a hummer. There isn't
soman alive her equal Why, that isn't
ick It's brains and pluck"
And Colonel Hayes Of Ell Paso knows
What he is talking about when he dis
uses mining. In his forty years or eX-
Ierience he has made and lost three Dig
ortunes In the southwest. Like all the
;rizzled miners down In northern Mexico
md thru the territories he doffs his hat
% Mary West, the blue-eyed. CHEEKY,
rosy- checked young woman who has made
prospecting big success, and who to-day
,as 500, 900 from mines that she has To-
.ated in places where none but she be-
ieved that gold could be hidden.
She has faced perils among painted saw
,ges in a cheerless, lonely region, and had
strange experiences amid scorching desert
wastes, CHASTITY gulches and alkali-laden
,anons. Accompanied by her brother,
she searched for gold for four years
among the Margarita and Apache noun
.ains-a sullen, forsaken region. Foot
sore and weary, she travelled over hun
lreds Of square miles of mountains and
desert always seeking evidences Of buried
mineral wealth beneath the sun baked
soil. She endured hunger and thirst be-
meath lurid sky for weeks at a time. She
and her brother braved terrific, binding,
suffocating sand storms that killed their
jackasses They nearly died with cold
while they camped on lofty mountain tops
In midwinter. Many time night after
night, they slept amid cactus and whit
ened boulders. 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
went soaring when she came upon an out
cropping that indicated a buried ledge OF
fabulous riches leading into 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, thru
gulches and across burning deserts, test
ing a producing rock here, scrutinizing a
canon wall there.
Once she was so worn out by exposure
and hardship that she and her brother
4 took refuge for several weeks in the
squalid howell Of Yaqui Indian family
lin the Santa Maria mountains, some ITO
miles from the nearest white settler. All
lone winter they lived in a cabin on the
Sonora side of the mountains, subsisting
Ichia6V hams and nnrk with
]sional vegetables bought from Yaqui herd
jers A little money earned at No
3gales and Tombstone to keep up the mea-
ger camp supplies, by assaying for pros
1pectors who came there.
But at last fortune smiled on Mary
West. In May, 1897. on the eastern side
4 Of the Warren mountains, thirty-four
] miles northwest from Nogales. the girl
dprospector came upon an outcropping
Hedge Of golden ore that was well worth
dany ones while. Several months OF man
4 ual toll uncovered the property to show
I that it was valuable. That was the be-
ginning Of the Manzanita mine. which has
3produced over $140.000 In gold up to date,
land has still promise Of more wealth.
Twenty-Five years ago Mary Vests
father was an assayer at the Little
! Pittsburg silver mine in Leadville. Col.
She Is native Of GAINESVILLE, Wis, AMI
the third born Of five children.
& "Our family lived within rifle shot Of
4 the Little Pittsburg," said she the other
9day In the office Of the Wisconsin mine,
h $50 often ran over to the brick assay
d office at the mine where father was busy
5nll day. I had the childish curiosity to
know what he was about as he crushed
bits OF ore from sample sacks all day
long and performed various assays in the
ovens and crucibles. He was a born
j teacher. Before I was even IL years old
II had rudimentary knowledge of what
4 sflver ores were worth and how simple
assays were made. Father use to make
private assays at home for gold and sill
I yer prospectors. In the course Of a few
years WAS helper to my father. and /
4 came to know thousand and one things
about meta1lurgy that all mining pros
4 pectors should know and few do know.
when father died the family was left
I In debt and with no income. The older
4 boys went to Idaho and I became a
teacher in q mining camp in Colorado
Supporting my mother and myself.
q saved money enough for a course In 9
Denver school Of mines during the sum
mer vacation. I was the only girl student
! ever at the institution. After a finishing
course at Chicago university became a
: fully equipped woman n1etallurgist the
! first in the United States, am told
/ 1.-TWO years more Of school teaching fol-
I lowed, then the news Of the silver finds
. at Chloride, In Mojave county Arizona,
! reached me. With my mother and
!, younger brother went there and opened
! an assay Office. It was discouragins
venture. Miners had no faith In an as
sayer In petticoats and mining there was
on the wane.
IA grizzled old prospector trudged into
my office one day with a sack Of gold rock
D specimens from over the San Lorenzo
mountains and Maricopa desert. He had
no money, and he proposed that he and
+ become mining partners, so my brother
and started for the claim. Those speci-
mems were all right and the ledge was a
\ rich one, but the property had been
claimed by three men before my partner
got there. We had no money for a legal
contest for ownership and had no heart
for stealing other peoples property. So
quit. But I became prospector right
there. l was interested in the region
southwest of Tombstone. My knowledge
4 Of geology made me believe that the same
couses that formed the Congress and
Tombstone mines had operated similarly
( among the lonely mountain ranges along
\ the boundary of Arizona and Mexico
/ Sin the months and years that followed
( lived prospectors life knew would
s strike It. some day, and did. I discov-
( cred the Manzan1ta mine. But I had tc
go to school teaching In Tombstone tc
( get the money to develop 1t. saved ey-
II u
/