The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-07-10
BUTTERFIELD'S FIGHT TO GET
 HIS MINES BACK Properties Worth Millions of Dollars Hang Upon Decision of Califor-
 mia Court Legal Battle Was Begun Quarter of a Century Since and Is Now
 Near It's Close Two Famous Lawyers Inter ested; In the Beginning Ben Butler; Now
 MT. Dolphin Del
Properties Are Located In Famous Homer Mining District and Have Yielded Great Quantities of Gold Title , Now Held By Crystal Lake Mining Co., Story as Fascinating as that of Treasure Island" or Captain Kidd's Hidden Wealth.

Not the story of Treasure Island, '' 1 nor the search for Capt. Kidds hidden
 wealth is more thrillingly interesting than the tale of the fight made by fGeorge w. Butterfield to recover pos- session of the mining properties worth millions of dollars which were taken from him more than. 20 years ago by s q process of legal triczery, the tangled { slzeins of which have taxed the ener- seiee of the courts now for many years. fBut the drama now seems drawing to a close.
 Tn California, about six miles west of
 Mono Lake. and in the midst of the kgrandest mountain scenery, lies Homer Mining district, in two of the eastern canyons of the High Sierra whose lofty and granite crest there forms a boun- dary between Mono and Tuolumne counties, dividing the waters which fall eastward into Mono Lake from those that flow westward, through the headwaters of the San Joaquin River, into the Pacific Ocean Through the lofty southern wall of Mill Creek can on breaks the lake canon gorge whose course is southsrly: 9orning 1l almost S a canon; and it's debouchure is at the crest of a scarped cliff which rises some $50 feet in height above the little town at it's base The steep granite walls of Lake Canon tower from the 5height of 2.0O0 to 2.b00 feet above its floor, in which, like emerald jewels arc get thsee alpine lakelets the larg- lest of which are half a mile long: At 'ats head. three miles south from
 Lundy, a precipitous mural cliff of
 richly colored s1ates divides lake canon
 from the noxth fork of Lee-Vining
 canon. whose waters empty into Mono
 Lake. In this cliff, and at another
 point, namely, in the north wall of
 Mill Creek canon at Lundy, can be seen the contact between the slates and granite in vertical cross section, about 1000 feet in depth at the former exposure and some 2,000 feet or more at the latter. At both places the con- tact dips to the west at high angle;
 while between them its outcrop curves westward along the broad and lofty crest whose magnificent eastern es- carpment forms the precipitous west
 ern face of Lake Canon These states form the western leg of the anticlinal fold to which reference has been made, and through which the Lake Canon
 Kranitfc mass has broken: but it is in
 this latter rock-a handsome horn blende Granite-that the May Lundy and nearly all the productive mines of the Homer district have been found.
 Thus, in substance, speaks William drelan, Jr., in the eighth annual re- port of the State Mineralogtst of the .California State Mining Bureau, of the gigantic mountain scenery in which is located that May Lundy and other
 mines about which for more than a score or years d SISil dT1Iud O1 NlO law has woven a theme as powerfully
 thrilling as any of the stories told in the not real dramas of the smaller stage
 The people of Bridgeport are in a general way familiar with the broad fact that George w. Butterfield, their fellow townsman, has brought suit agairst the Crystal Lake Gold Mining Company, Frederic A. Pike, C. N. Fox, 1I. Lee Borden, and others, living, or dead, to recover the May Lundy mine and other mines in the neighborhood of the May Lundy, of which. by the process described in his pleadings, ad- aressed to the Superior court, in and for the county of Mono, State of Cali fornia, he has been for many years de- prived.
 That this litigation, fought since the early eighties and about to be brought to a conclusion, will go down among the famous Allegations of recorded his tory there can be little doubt in the minds of those familiar with the his tory of the fight which Butterfield has made and the proceedings which he is now engaged 1n-
 e fudge of the Supreme court of the State of California H. Lee Borden ,vas a business man of rare ability, and of household fame through his connection with the great milk busi- ness of the Borden name
 George W. Butterfield was a pros nector. He had little knowledge of He in the paper contracts that lawyers draw. Fox he knew; Pike he knew and Borden he knew. Of them he ex-