Wallowa County chieftain. [volume] (Enterprise, Or.) 1909-1911, 1910-05-26
Comet Property Shows
Good PrO?peCt of
a Producer.
ENTERPRlSE.J0SEPH
MINERAL DISTRICT
Doubtless Will Prove one
of Great Value to the
County With Suffi-
cient Work.

II is usual for a so-called min
ing camp paper torelate with ooid'
black headlines and continuous!
big puffs" about the mineral OF MS
locality. Such a paper, anywhere, on
the very nature of its subject mat
ter. can tell the truth, the whore
truth and then some. Sometimes II
tells the truth and then some, be-
cause one authority is as good as
another. when it comes to seeing
800 feet through rock into the grouno
Such a paper can make the statemen
plausible that given ledge runs ana
expands as it runs, 1000 feet down;
and it can not be proven wrong.
This paper is not a mining camp
PAPER. to begin with. 1t would not
consciously misrepresent a solitary
letail of its county's mineral possi-
bilities, If it were. When therefore,
It seeks to give, as in this article.
an account of the mineral lying in
n nearby hills, it seeks to give moth
ing but what is known to be observ-
abe, concrete mineral fact. 1t does
not seek to mislead single eastern
lor home investor, nor to predict
more for the mineral future than
ne present mineral facts justify.
Zig In Developing.
All mineral properties experience
4 long Developing period. ALI mineral
belts or localities have to go through
generation of prospecting, before
The development is sufficient to war
rant the Investment of big capital.
But all real mineral belts are devel-
oped, sooner or later, simply because
al capital must have avenues for in
yestment, and because the world
must have mineral. That Is plain.
Taking the Calumet and Hecla
nine. of Calumet, Mich, as an ex-
ample, the prospector of that copper
district prospected and developed
prospects for years, before capital
=. Id be interested. Capital laugh
! at the prospec Or for about d
1enl ration. Capital Il "a the pros
ps:-Jr ;ha the !a,ier had no min
.ral there hut the prospector nursed
MS conviction deep in, his troubled
soitl, and worked away. The deep
er into the ground he went the more
EVIDENCE he found with which to con.
vince capital. Until finally, after
ti4" weary years had dragged out
heir length, and the weary prospec-
1of had dragged out the greater part
CT his life, capital was shown >
To-Day the Calumet mine is about
mile into the ground, with about
four or five miles of underground
workings. Native copper is found In
such boulders that it can not be
blasted, but Is cut out. And no one
today denies that there is copper in
that district.
WaIIowa Has Mineral.
Wallowa county, and especially
the Joseph and Enterprise district,
has mineral. We know that it has
good mineral, and anybody can know
L. simply because good mineral is
taken out of the ground, and may be
seen. One group, the Comet" hold
ings has some of the finest sam.
pies of gold, silver and copper ore
to be found in eastern Oregon
The contact lies between granite
and lime. The samples assayed al
practically the surface, give $40 in
gold to the ton, SO in silver and 81
in copper. The silver occurs in many
places in the ore in ruby" and pre-
sents a beautiful picture. The full
values in copper have not been, de
termined, in that the deeper the con
tact runs the better the copper ap
pears to grow.
Ledge Nine Fd,t
The ledge In the Comet runs
nine feed vide with an ore shoot
of A inches. AT the very surface
before more than a face" of the
ledge was exposed, the gold values
ran os65 TO the ton. The mineral
lied zone of rock, so far as surface
indications show, runs or appears to
run the practical length of the hill
giving volume to what doubtless
will prove a producer with develop
ment.
All that the mineral in the Enter
prise and Joseph district needs Is
more prospecting. 1t matters moth
ing at all that more or less surface
scratching has been carried on fol-
20 years or more. The district need.
that development work which practi