The Mena weekly star., 1916-11-23
yELLVILLE NUGGETS.
YeIlville. Ark- Nnv. Il iai

SbiASl hA6 HUH otNtIdt iIliQ dttdtkS of heart failure owing to the un- |eertainty of the election of President Wilson, I drifted into the mountain city of Yellville, and found it a very attractive and busy place with a population of about 1000, a fine stone courthouse, several good stores, a good school, several churches. electric lights, and in fact almost all the accessories that make up a iirst-class town.
 Melville is located in little val ley that juts up against a range of rugged mountains on one side and is bordered on the south side by a mountain stream of clear spring water that is hardly large enough to be called a river and too large to be called a creek. It is a fine fish ing stream, and it glides away to- ward White .Rivef among some of the finest valley farm lands l have seen in my travels. Broad fields of green alfalfa, beautiful orchards. and fine farm houses dot the val leys in every direction, and as | walked out along the river road last Saturday | was reminded of my old home in Ohio. Next to the fine or chards, the alfalfa fields looked mighty good to me, and I am told the farmers harvest four and five crops of hay during the year. Blue grass and orchard grass do we'll in this county, and it is certainly adapted to all kinds of fruit, espe- cially berries and grape. It also appears to be an ideal poultry coun- try, altho every resource of the country seems to be completely overshadowed by the mining indus try. In fact Melville is in about the center of the zinc producing fields of Arkansas, and as about 100 tons of ore are shipped from the dis trict daily, it is reasonable to pre- dict that the Melville field will soon rival the Joplin district ill the pro- duction of zinc ore. Rush is the largest mining town near Melville. and is the center of a group of camps in that neighborhood. Rush is about fourteen miles from this town, and it is indeed a rushing mining town, and about half of the ore produced in the district is hauled here for shipment. Altho considerable capital has been invest ed in mining machinery in this dis trict the facilities for getting out ore are yet limited, and the territory needs more money to develop it's mineral resources. Most of the min ing has been done by tunneling or drifting into the sides of the moun- tains and the mines are therefore not hampered by the water propo- sition so common in mining com munties. Zine ore is selling for 800 per ton, and therefore the mining business is booming. Teamsters get s{00 per ton for hauling ore from Rush to Melville, distance of fourteen miles, and wages are gen. orally good. A road bed has been graded from this place to Rush for railroad, and an automobile road is now under construction.
 The people of Melville and mine operators of Rush are thoroly alive to the good roads proposition and they are practically building the road. having donated about Si 300 in cash and free labor recently. The third good roads day was observed last Saturday and a good crowd of men and boys. with several teams assembled at point about mile south of town, and put in the day in working the road. The ladies of the town served a sumptuous din- ner on the ground, and the occasion was more like a holiday than a work day The long table was loaded with good things to eat, and in fact there was enough good grug in that spread to feed 800 hungry men. Aside from doing a little newspaper work as- signed to me by the editor of a To- cal paper, l did enough road work to entitle me 10 my dinner, and I want to assure you that l did full justice Go the occasion. Owing to the fact that merchants were busy last Saturday and many farmers had come to town to trade the crowd of workers was not as large as on previous occasions, but about foo men and boys were present. Anoth- CT good roads day has been am nounced for next Thursday, and the mine operators at Rush have agreed to put their ore haulers on the road for one day at full pay
 One more word about the mineral proposition One of the strongest arguments that can be offered in support of the importance and per- manency of the industry is the statements of the local bankers to the effect that their bank deposits have increased over 200 per cent during the last eighteen months. This increase has come largely from the output of mineral, as the drouth has cut the agricultural yield almost down to zero. Of course quite a humber of cattle and hogs have been hipped from this point, but the bulk of the increase has been due to tic ore output. Now, Mir. Editor, per- init me to assure my old Polk county friends that I have found a pleas ant. home-like town, with sociable, hospitable people. and have al reasdisTr resasdisTr fallen in love with the place and it's people. As we frontier edi- tors used to say in starting a paper