The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1911-07-24
Traces of the Precious Metal Have
Been Found in This Vicinity
But Comes In Small and
valueless Bunches.
GEOLOGICAL HISTORY
Bend In the River Hero Was Caused
by Glacier Several Million
Years Ago Which Gro
ated Big Dam.
by G. Walter Barr /

When the author Of the delightfr
Hes in last Sundays Gate CITY toll
about traces o. gold being found Il
the excavation for the water.powe
dynamo house, he described VIVA
may easily occur any day. It is I'm
possible for writer of fiction to b,
more remarkable than facts.
There probably are traces of goIc
IN the bed of the Mississippi rive,
here-there certainly is gold a hall
dozen miles up river.
When the canal was built. large
number OF specimens of hair gold
were found below Galland. The resi-
cent engineers. superintendent and
foremen had the habit OF sending
specimens of gold to their friends In
the east Hair gold is pure gold In
the form and size of fine hairs.
All the creeks and permanent
bitches between the middle lock and
the upper lock pan traces of gold
from their sands and dirt.
There is ledge OF gold ore on the
old Lyons farm below Galland, where
the Montrose wagon road is up on a
snelf in the high bluff, which out.
crops IN very deep ravine. I have
an assay certificate showing that this
ore yields s4.16 per ton IN gold. I
also have figures showing that it costs
s4.25 to get out the ore, ship to the
nearest reduction works at Omaha.
and have the gold extracted. So there
is nothing exciting about it as COM
mercial proposition.
Plenty Of specimens OF virgin con
per have been found in this stretch of
river. The finest and largest was
blasted out of the bluff above the
keokuk union station when the street
railway built the curve on the rock
shelf there. This specimen was as
large as ones two hands.
Big ShawI-strap Handle.
Biologists who think gold can not
be found in the trough of the contin.
ent in alluvfal formation have some
more to learn.
glance at county man shows the
Mississippi river running almost dua
east and runs in the figure of a shawl.
strap handle, returning westward
here at Keokuk. 1t was forced into
this handle shaped course exactly as
stream in the gutter is forced
around brickbat
Some million of years ago, more
rather than less, big glacier slowly
moved down from the northeast II
reached the bottom of the continental
trough around where Montrose fs now
all this was before Washington Cal.
land was born or DIR. Muir founded
keokuk. In the bottom of this con.
tlnental trough, it naturally piled I'D
its mountains Of ice. II was much
Ike pouring corn ears down gloping
plank Thousand miles and more long
into the bottom Of wagon bed Aye
or ten miles wide, only in this case
1t was ice that came down.
The soure. of the Gold
This gigantic river Of ice broke of
rubbed of and picked up large GUAM
tiues OF rock on It's way. ,ucInding
quartz from Canada and copper from /
the Lake Superior region-although /
tnere was no lake Superior then as /
tnere Is now, any more than there /
was a congressman from Monuose.
when the ice jam miles wide. a mir
nigh and hundreds of miles long DiIed
up about the site of Montrose II droD-
ped the quartz containing gold and i
the copper ore and free copper ii had
accumulated UP northeast. Every
thing except the copper metal was
ground to fine powder. This sand
gradually and finally hardened into
sandstone. The Sonora sandstone has
this origin-and SO has the gold found
along the river.
The Jam In the Mississippi.
Now, at the time of the arrival