Arizona republican., 1913-01-25
DISCOVERIES OF PHOSPHATE
 DEPOSITS.
Three Beds of Important Mineral Fer
 tilizer Located in Montana.

From outcrops of phosphate rock in the Garnet Range, miles north of Garrison, Mont, may be seen, 35 miles away, immense volumes of smoke pouring out of the smelter stasks at
 Anaconda-great quantities of sulphur
 Ous acid escaping into the atmosphere.
 At times this acid laden smoke clouds
 the whole of Deer Lodge Valley. The
 great economic importance of this sit
 uation lies in the fact that phosphate
 rock is quickly rendered available as
 plant food by dissolution in sulphuric acid. The combination of immense
 deposits of phosphate rock and a prac-
 tically unlimited and readily accessible
 supply of sulphuric acid may have con- siderable bearing on the agricultural progress of the west in years to come, if not indeed at present.
 This deposit of phosphate near Gar l rson is one of the three discovered in Montana in 1911 by J. T. Pardee, of the United States Geological Survey. | The others are at Philipsburg, on the 1 south slope of Flagstaff Hill, and half
 a mile east of EllistOn. north of Little | Blackfoot River. Rock phosphate was 1 aso discovered in the same year by R. | w. Stone, of the Geological Survey,
 about miles east of Cardwell, Mont, on the Northern Pacific railway, at the summit of the cliffy slope rising to the 1 west from Jefferson river.
 l These discoveries were merely inci- dental to the prosecution of other geo. logic work so that the deposits were 1 not studied in any great detail. Enough | was learned, however, to make certain + that they are commercially valuable 4 and of the same type $ the phosphate 4 found by Hoyt $. Gale, also of the II Federal Survey, near Melrose, Mont, ,j in 1910 and that of the extensive Ida ' ho- Wyoming field. The deposits dis II covered by Mir Pardee lie from 60 to n 70 miles north and that by MT. Stone
 40 miles northeast of Melrose; hence ' they may be said to extend the limits I of the known phosphate field for those distances
 IL At the point near Garrison the phos- 'i phate bed is feet thick and more than feet of it is shown by analyses to bt high grade material. At neither Phil ipsburg nor Elliston was the thickness
 of the bed determined but the out
 crops show that in each place it is al
 1 d
 of float indicates that it is probably
 more, about the same as in the Garnet
 Range At Cardwell it probably eX-
 ceeds feet in thickness
 l Although detailed work on which tC
 base a tonnage estimate has not yet
 been done, it is apparent from the ex- , Examinations made that in the Garnet Range at least, a large amount ot phosphate is present. For instance 14,0O0 tons would be the content of ar acre underlain by a flat bed of phos- phate 4 feet thick. Where the phos- phate bed is steeply tilted, as it com monly is in this region, the amount be meath an acre is much greater
 The phosphate deposits at both Phil. | psburg and Elliston are near tht [tracks of the Northern Pacific railway; that at Cardwell lies near the Chicago Milwaukee & Puget Sound and North. ern Pacific railway; and that north O ! Garrison is readily accessible by two ! wagon roads, one going directly nortl ! from that place, the other up the valle, { Eof Warm Spring Creek. The creel { route is one that offers no unusual diff 1 faculties for the construction of a rail { lroad that would with a haul of abou ] E6 miles, place the phosphate on tn ! main line of two trunk railroads These discoveries are described brief l Fly in Bulletin 530-H, "Phosphates il ! Idaho and Montana by A. R. Schultz R. w. Richards and J. T. Pardee, jus issued by the United States Geologica Survey, a copy of which may be ob tained free on application to the Di ! rector at Washington, D. c.