Arizona republican., 1911-09-28
WRITER TELLS OF
 PLACER PROSPECTS
EI Paso Expert Declares There is Plenty of Gold up m Hassayam-
 DO District.

IDinsmOre, editor of a mining journal
 at Fl Paso, will be of interest to lmany readers of the Republican:
 (By Chas A .Dinsmore.) ......
 A placer movement-almost "boom" Lis on in the section of country be- tween Morristown and Wickenburg,
 Arizona. extending up the Hassayam-
 pa river over a territory 20 miles long
 by wide. It is justifiable. I have
 spent five weeks in this section, and
 without any too do have prospected a great deal of the ground. It all car
 ries gold Sometimes the average of a gulch will be 10 cents cubic yard.
 sometimes 90 cents and generally it
 reaches 40 cents. while in some places
 whole gulches will run up to T5 cents. The gold is fairly coarse. It Is found
 on the benches as well as on the side
 hills. but the gulches always carry it | in quantity to pay The gold is in
 about the same quantity whether on
 the surface halfway down to the bed
 rock The gulches and benches of this
 whole section have afforded meat and
 beans for a great many people during the last half century, by the dry wash l ON.
 try has been lack of water. Everyone
 knew of the gold; but the dry wash | ing was slow, tedious and not over productive, for several reasOns-in the ! first place the sand is never actually
 dry to bedrock, and if it was not more than a third could be saved by dry
 washing. Thus, for 10 or 15 years only few Americans have done any plac- ering here, leaving it to the MeXicans, who have occasionally found excep- tionally rich ground and made 8 to s25 with their inadequate little ma chimes. Still. nobody gave this rich ground any real attention because without water nothing could be made working it
 They now have the water.
 It is the easiest thing in the world "a lot easier than the easiest inven- ton man ever planned-but it took an outsider to evolve it. An Alaska plac- CT miner named John s. Sanger, ac- companied by his wife. turned against the hardships of the Nome country and came out this way in search of 25-cent ground. They found it here-9 miles either from Morristown of Wickenburg and it was better (much better) than z5-cent ground. Then he ran against the old snag-no water; and for a time thought his dreams of doing some thing were to naught. because he did not for a minute consider regular dry washing nor the many schemes for securing the gold from the gravel by other means than water He began {. Ii,,tyf riding over one of the upper washes one day the thought popped into his mind. If the government is spending millions building dams to impouhd wa ter for agricultural purposes, why, in the name of all the Checkawkers of the country. can't impOund water for placering?" and that is what he Is doing He is putting in two dams. one conserving 1OO.OOO.OOO gallons of wa ter. the other 5O,OOO, 900 gallons. The expense of dam, pipe line. etc. will come so much inside s6.000 that he can buy a big span of mules out of what is left This may not sound just right to the man who has toiled and starved for water in the desert, but it is real so real, in fact, that Christmas money" will come to a great many through their operations in this very field For there is not a gulch where water cannot be conserved-sometimes at considerable cost and oftentimes for almost nothing. but always leaving big margins for profit. Not a tenth of the ground has been taken. though loca- tions are being made daily now. Many placer miners have been here lately and were amazed. not at the amount of gold, of which they knew. but that no one had ever before hit upon this little easy scheme Of building a dam to supply necessary water. Everybody familiar with the Southwest will re- member the famous San Domingo pla- cer fields-well, this is the San DO- mingo of which I write. Without wa ter 1t is mot worth whoop in hell" With water, it is a bonanza, better thing than Alaska ever had because in- stead of 90 days there, it is nine months here in which one is sure of sufficient water to operate on a good scale. With water, and 9 cent dirt, one can save 20 cents a yard.
 The San Domingo wash is one of the biggest in the district, carrying on av- craze over 40 cents a yard for several miles in length and more than quar- ter mile wide. with bedrock Tot less than feet: American Gulch is good, though not so extensive; old Woman wash is higher grade; Spring Gulch wash is over miles long, half a mile wide. feet deep: Rogers wash is 2ll miles long 1000 feet wide. feet deep; Sanger's wash is about the size of Rogers; Tub Springs wash is several miles long, 500 feet wide, feet to bedrock; Lavelle wash is miles long. though at the extreme upper end the values are not over 10 cents. but for 3 miles it will run well. In fact. all these washes carry more than 40 cents a yard, as proven by a large number of test pits-there are 200 such pits to bedrock in Rogers wash. Because the people of this section know the value of the ground. the simple plan to se- cure water has caused many to get excited and they are locating and pre- pairing to put in dams before the win ter rains. In connection with the val ues I wish to state that have banned a great deal, have seen many others pan a lot-and not a barren pan has been washed. This does not for a minute mean to convey the idea that there is no barren ground; but even a