The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-06
END OF IRON MOUNTAIN.
FAMOUS ORE DEPOSIT ONLY 4
 RED HILL NOW.

Town WnAcn IS becoming PlcIur-
 esque Ruin.
 Nothing is left of the famous Iron Mountain save a mound and a mem ory. The Circuit Court of St. Fancios county dissolved the Iron Mountain Company recently upon unanimous petition of the stockholders, and the stockholders, and the assets have been divided and the concern has gone out of existence. That was the ultimate and final end of Iron Mountain as mining propositions says a Farming ton, Mo, correspondent of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
 After half a century of action and inaction ups and downs rapid growth and still more sapid decay, this most celebrated iron mine in the world, a mere wart on the surface of southeast Missouri, which paid more than $T,OOO,O00 in dividends through it's output of the basest and commonest .ot metals, enters irreyocably the past
 Iron Mountain, however. still lives
  and will live in history. It belongs to the romantic record of world develop ment; it is an interesting chapter in the book of material progress; it had to do with the making of mghty en- terprises and the growth of States and the spreading of civilization into from ter places. Noting in the whole his tory of iron mining operations in the United States or elsewhere has oc- cupied quite such a conspicious place as during it's active lie dd Iron Mountain, the nexhautible hill of ore that played out.
 Fifty years ago Government experts pronounced the iron ore in the noun tain practically lnexhaustible." Twenty-Five years ago there were eX- perts who held the same view. It was believed that the entire mountain above ground and far into the bowels of the earth beneath the surface of the surrounding valley was mass of almost solid iron ore, averaging 65 per cent. pure iron. Thirteen years ago, however, the Iron Mountain Company suspended operations on the extensive scale of the preceding quarter of q century, and since then the taking out of ore had been carried on but spor- adically and in comparatively small quantities. There is still some ore left in the remains of the mountain, but not enough to work in paying quanti- ties.
 Though the enthusiastic expectations of the earlier geoglogists were not to be realized the fact that the Iron Mountain Company, capitalized at $3,000,000, paid nearly 200 per cent di- vidends on it's capitalization in about twenty-five years of active operations shows that this played out mountain was by no means a failure. From hill 22S feet high, its base covering about 800 acres, and from an adjoining knoll called Little Iron Mountain, much smaller in area, a production of $7O00,000 in iron is in every sense re- markable
 When Iron Mountain first began to yield ore, sixty-one years ago, it's lo- cation was practically wilderness. The country was but sparcely settled. The roads were merely dim trails through the woods and up and down the rocky hills. There were, of course no railroads.
 It was not until 1858 that the St. Louis; Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad was built from St. Louis to Iron Mountain and a little later ex- tended to Pilot Knob to haul the ores to St. Louis.
 For many years the company main- tained an immense blast furnace at Irondale, twelve miles north, where millions of tons of pig iron were manufactured. This furnace founded and built the town of Irondale, whlcn became almost deserted village about thirty years ago, when the fur mace closed down, but latterly has re- covered considerably as farming community. For miles in every direc- tion from Irondale the heavy timber was cut off and burned into charcoal for use in the blast furnaces.
 Thirty or forty years ago the coal wagon; with a huge bed built in the shape of a barge, the sides sloping outward, was a familiar sight on country roads. The timber was burn ed to charcoal in pits on the land where it was cut. These pits were merely stacks of wood, built up to a height of about wenty feet, eonical in shape and covered with leaves and earth. Fires were started in the inter for and the wood was burned to char.
 The Iron Mountain Company owned land reaching two and one-half miles in every direction from Iron Noun tain. The wood from this land was cut off for charcoal and the company also purchased the timber from thousands of acres owned by other parties and made charcoal of it. Since the aband- onment of the furnaces a new growth of trees has succeeded the once heavy forests, but most of the timber is still too light to be used for lumber.
 The town of Iron Mountain in it's palmy days was a mining camp of unique interest. Though the town contained approximately 5000 people including perhaps 2000 miners and furnace hands, there was practically no rowdyism. About fifteen years ago the town began to dwindle and after the practical suspension of operations in 1903 the dwindling process was quite rapid. At present the population numbers scarcely 100 and for several years; until two months ago, even the post office was abandoned and the e s,,i, l.