Los Angeles herald., 1908-09-07
CONCENTRATOR
WORKS WONDERS
SAVES NEARLY ALL VALUES IN
PLACER GROUND
cooLGARDlE MACHINE HANDLES
100 TONS DAILY
Controlling Syndicate Buys Old Claims
In San Bernardino County from
Which $3eo,ooo in Gold
Was Removed

BARSTOW, Sept. 6.-The fact that
an entirely successful dry concentrat-
ing machine has been manufactured is
being proved every day in the week
at the property of the Coolgardie Min
ing company, twenty-five miles north
of this place, where the machine is
handling 100 tons Of placer ground
daily and saving the almost unprece-
dented amount of 81 per cent of the
values.
The Coolgardie Mining company is
close corporation, owned by New I ork
and Los Angeles parties. Although the
owners of the Coolgardie property nave
a big proposition and know 1t, they
showed great nerve in going in as they
did and as deeply as they did before
they knew that they would ever be
able to develop a process that would
savesthe gold in their ground.
The Coolgardie group of placer
claims was purchased two years ago
from A. S. Clark, Henry Martin j.. b.
Goldsberry, Alfred Jordan, Sam Dicus,
Richard Duncan, E. A. Barnes, Ben
Hemus, Y. c. Moseley, Bert Sides and
John Cowell, who had owned and
worked the property with ordinary
dry washers for four or five years. the
ground is what is known as channel
ground and embraces 1000 acres, with
an average depth of three and a half
feet to bedrock. A low estimate of the
amount of pay dirt in this immense
placer field is 12,000000 cubic yards,
every ton of which will pay excellent
returns to the fortunate owners OF the
enterprise. The estimate of the num-
ber of cubic yards of ground was made
by F. A. Malins of Denver and j. r.
Keene of San Francisco, who also re-
norted the average value of the ground
70 he 81 ner cubic yard. The ground
was purchased upon their combined re-
port.
Worked in Early Days
while the former owners of the Cool-s
pardie ground worked it by primitive
methods they took out an immense
amount of gold, as the books or the
merchants of the adjacent desert towns
where they purchased their supplles,
and the receipts given by Wells, Fargo
& Co. for gold shipped from tnere
show a total of $780, 900. A goodly part
of this vast sum was taken out OF the
ground by leasers. many OF Whom
worked the property from year to year;
AS soon as the ground was purchased
NV the members of the Coolgardie syn
dicate. composed of Henry Mountain
and w. H. Laird of New YORK ana a.
r. lTtDSOn Oh 1DS 4AIlSClCSS
assisted by Frank Smith, mining ana
mechanical engineer, set to work 10
devise and build a dry concentrator
that would save the gold which mas
lain hidden in the Coolgardie field Tor
MANY decades. Considerable money was
spent in experimenting, and numerous
theories were worked out and aban-
doned before the machine whlch they
have patented was built, tried out ana
nroved a success. A successful demon
stration was made three months ago,
and now the company is having seven
more machines installed. They were
huilt bv a we'll known machine man
ufacturing concern in Los Angeles.
When it is taken into consideration
that a large sum of money was pdlu
for the ground and then another large
sim set aside for experimenting on dry
concentration, the man that knows the
many hardships and disappointments
met with in mining will give the
members of the placer mining syndl-
cate great credit for the nerve exhlp-
tied in the enterprise so successfully
carried through.
Has Most Complete Camp
The Coolgardie company has the
most complete camp on the deserts Oh
san Bernardino county. When the
seven new machines are working Iull
blast the company Will ceIldlll4y Ao'O
a live camp in operation.
When Mountain and Smith began ex-
nerimenting on dry placer machines
thew devolved the idea of concentra-
tion as being the most plausible meth
cd of extracting the values from the
ground with the least possible loss.
Txneriments proved that their theo-
ries were correct, and the machine now
in operation saves nearly all the Nalues
from the dirt run through 1t.
one hundred tons is concentrated
into one ton, and the concentrates nm
;shed on a smaller machine made upon
+he same plans as the original When
the second operation is completed there
remains about fifty pounds of concen-
trates which holds the gold values for
1,erly distributed through hundred
IONS of earth. The residue is then
easilv treated by another simple pro-
cess and the gold secured in It's pure
Application has been made for pat
ent 10 cover the entire Coolgardle held'
Other Los Angeles parties Interest ST
cd in the Coolgardie enterprise are w.
M Hine and DR.. ]. B. Renshaw'