The copper era., 1911-04-28
OUR PLACER FIELDS
 GIVE GREAT PROMISE
$ ChaS. DinSmOre. After a Careful Investigation, Writes of the Possibilities Close
 at Hand
lBY cHAs. A. p1NsMoRE.l ]

(BY CHAS. A. DINSMOR
 There is going to be "placer
 boom" in the Southwest the first
 thing you know-and it will be based
 on ground running from 10 cents to as
 many dollars yard I have just re-
 turned from a three-weeks stay ir the Ariznna-New Mexico border
 country about Cliff on; aud this time
 1 went out to see what some of the
 "little" fellows were doing. They
 are making good, but there isn't any
 stir about it, and for he most pant
 people take it as joke. But it isn't
 The fact is, and it IS we'll known, th d [
 usually as one gets to the outer edge
 of pronounced copper-bearfng
 sone, gold comes in, and the extent oi
 this gold bearing area may be few
 miles or it may be hundreds. O.
 course all the ground will not pay
 and no miner would attempt to work
 it; but a good quantity will, and .ay
 handsomely if worked carefully and
 with system I visited a property
 the other day where there are sixteen
 claims of placer ground, and they
 told me-and I believe it, because banned lot there-fhat an average
 of acres ou each of the claims carried pay dirt. On one of these claims there are three shafts-one, 40 feet deep; one, S5; one 103-thr
 first two were all the way through
 pay gravel, and the deepest one was in 20 feet of practically barren ground. Now, say that one follows
 the rise of the formation from the
 bottom of the second shaft, he will  go 400 feet before he gets to the sur face, following bedrock; and he will have anSaverage depth of sand of say 20 feet by l50 feet wide by 400 long. This will average above 40 cents d yard-in fact, it did average all the way down in that shaft over Sl. If you happen to know a mining engin- eer he will tell you that 27 cubic feet equal a cubic yard, and that if placer mining can be done economically- that is, if the ground is near plenty of water-it will pay handsomely if it run 10 cents yard and if quantities are worked. So it will easily be figured how hansomely this little pay. streak would reward one-and there are on this piece of land fully 10 acres of such ground. At another place an old prospector has taken p prOspected, getting from 1 cent to 10 cents per pan, and one pan yielded p cents. It is extra conservative to estimate that cent pan equals 50 cents yard. These are the facts regarding two properties. I visited another, miles from either ot these mentioned, and while I had no op- portunity for banning, the ground is similar in every respect and man in whom I place every confidence stated that the ground pans an average of Scents for every pan. This is in the new Arizona county of Greenlee, md 6 to Is miles from either Morenci or Clifton.
 Placer mining has been carried on somewhat for m thy years on the San Francisco river, which runs through the town of Clifton. Several years and the waters n boiling down the marrow canyon ana mighty near took the town. But after few days the waters subsided to normal. A young man named Kelluer rode up the stream a few days after the flood, and as his pony fox-trotted up stream something attracted the young mans eyes so strongly that 1e brought the pony to a standstill on his launches. and then he got off and picked up nugget of gold weighing Sll. He used his white slough hat for "pan." and in a depression in bedrock he took out that afternoon a little more than $40. He afterward went there with rocker and a few crude ap- plianCes, and in space not more than 4Ox4O feet he took out S9OO This claim was properly called "The old Hat" D. A. Lenox, further down the San Francisco river. work ing horsepower engine and smal Il pump, with a foot rocker, and with men to help, took out in IS hours S90. The largest nugget he found weighed Sl5 D, but he had many weighing from Sl to S2. The pay gravel here is l2 feet deep and there are about 8 acres of it; it lies B feet above the river, with ground for dumps anywhere. The river is per petu Il, and if one desired to hydraulic it could easily be done, while the situ tultion-al alIng the river, aS well as at this pJint-is ideal for dredging.
 The "country" in the placer fields consists of gravel and Gila con glomerate This couglomerate is generally considered 'bedrock" for | the auriferous sands Iu is made up of the rocks ot he whole region, all | closely cem nted together and being | now ''as hard as a rock" The | formation of this material, SD far d. have bcen made as 10 | placering, extended over a consider able time, because this conglome presents a sun both surface, or prdcti- | cally SO. This make placer mining | much easier than it would be were | the bedrock m ore rugged. After | the conglom rate was formed the | great erosio IS clme which freed the | gold fir ,m its rocks and gIngde, and | this came dow1 as state l, and de r osited on the bedrock. Niw, it has | 1 cen stated that this is exactly th- | &Aa ~ g LA