The White Pine news. [volume] (Ely, Nev.) 1906-1910, 1907-09-14
WALKERS REVIEW OF
LOCAL PROPERTIES
Continued from page one.)


very limited amount of development
work done seems TO prove this. There
is lot of good ore in sight around
three or four of it's shafts; but the
amount of rock and ore of all kinds
on the dumps makes it perfectly
plain that underground development
work has not been extensive.
My inspection of the property sat
isfies me that what the Giroux COM
pany needs now, and what it has
needed sadly from the start, is prac-
tical and sensible management. The
money which the public has paid for
GirouX stock seems TO have been eX-
pended chiefly on a stamp mill and
a smelter which III their character,
location and surroundings strongly
remind one of the hundreds of
wrecks which dot the hills of the
great west. | refer to the abandoned
mills and smelters which serve as
tombstones TO the buried hopes of
those who have in the past put their
money into the stocks of wildcat en-
terprises.
The GirouX mill is the joke of the
| Ely district 1t is built on the top
|
companies are hauling water one to
| five miles for drinking purposes
Some declare that the mill is to be
operated with bottle mineral water
and others say that the company's
employees are TO drink lemonade. II
is seriously said to be the plan of the
management to use the water ehcoun-
tered in the shafts of the mine and.
with the aid of settling tanks, to
make it do duty over and over again.
| Everybody who knows mines and
mining will recognize the folly of
| this plan. As a rule, a mine is COM
! paratiyely dry after it has been
1 pumped out the first time and the
surrounding area drained of its ac-
cumulated water. This is certain to
be true in the case of the Giroux, as
the property is not situated so as to
serve as drainage basin for any
surrounding country. The property
itself is a basin on a hill, however,
and if water is piped in from dis
lance and used in the mill it will af-
forwards run down through the
leached, porous Gaping of the ore
bodies into the mines and greatly in
crease operating expenses.
! am told that we'll known min
ing engineer visited the Giroux prop
erty little while ago for people who
contemplated an investment in the
stock. He was greatly pleased with
the surface geology and with the ore
on the dumps. Next he looked at the
mill and the little box-trap smelter
and inquired about the water supply.
Then he left for home. Did you ask
for privilege to go underground in
quired mining man he met. No"
he replied. there isn't enough ore
in the west to make me advise clients
to buy into a company whose man
agement spends its money to erect
concentrating mills where there is
| no water supply"
1t would seem that the Giroux
management has lost confidence in at
least one of its own plans. Work
on its smelter appears to have been
discontinued. There is an abundance
of material on the ground to work
with. So far as I could judge from
hasty review all of the machinery
and equipment was on the ground,
but no one was at work putting it in
place.
Almost everybody here believes
that the GirouX mill and smelter were
built to talk about-to help sell the
stock. If this is true, it was fright
fully big commission to pay. TIC
haul all this machinery and structur-
al material into camp with horses
was tremendously expensive. The Gil
roux property is about nine miles
from the Ely depot and | understand
that a considerable portion of the
mill and smelter material was hauled
L
railroad to Ely was completed The
money spent on these structures,
which are chiefly valuable so far as
subjects for amateur photographers,
would probably have developed the
Giroux property into one of the big
gest mines in the west.
Another important CD surface de-
velopment is narrow guage rail
road, with locomotives and cars CON
structed, evidently, to haul ore from
the mines to the mill, a distance of
mile or less. This is in operation.
The ore that is actually being hauled
nine or ten miles to Ely, however, is
going out of camp in express wagons.
For this real service nothing as prac-
tical as an ore wagon is available.
am told that the Giroux interests
have been holding up the Nevada
Northern railway for several weeks
on its application for a location to
extend its line across the Giroux
property. This is the one railroad
in the district, the one that is to
serve the Giroux company. Mr. Gil
rouX must go to this road to make a
traffic arrangement, must depend up
on it for cars, etc, and if he has been
'bucking it" on the question of a
location on his property, as reported, !
he certainly is lacking in ordinary
business diplomacy. One would nat /
urally suppose that he would have |
welcomed the railroad to almost any
location in order TO get ii to his I
property.
1t is pretty generally understood /
that of the 100000 shares of Gil
rouX stock something less than 100,-
600 shares remained unissued in the
treasury; and the Giroux family
owns and holds in a pool $50, 900 4
shares. If this pooled stock should
change ownership and pass to up-to-
date mining interests the stock now
in the hands of the public would be
enhanced in value very greatly. As
ara onipn fopurorJ non, I