The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1917-05-17

nad only three dollars When L go
to Cripple Greek and that didn't las
I very long. One couldn't buy mucl
with three dolalrs in Cripple Creek a
that time. / spent all my money fo
food and was unable TO pay for {
. room. | went to Victor, but couldn'
find anything there either ana tinall,
wound up on top of Bull Hill, where
| obtained a job bueking samples in J
c. Stats assay office, near the ole
, Pharmacist mine That was early In
January, 1894.
So that was your first work in min
ing?
and when he wanted to go away fol-
two or three months, ! ran his bust
ness l did WE'LL it paid very nicely
In the meantime, the first Cripple
Creek strike came on. BY chat time
had located some people | knew. One
of them was f. n. Flynn, who had
been an undergraduate student with
me at the school of mines. Later on,
when Stats came back and took his
business, | went to work In a shaft on
the old Lottie Gibson, but only work.
ed there short time.
And what was your next step?
In the meantime Ed Holden, Charlie
MacNeil, George Pierce (of the Gold
en- Fleece mine), and Captain De La
mar had organized a company for
starting the first barrel chlorinat ton
Iehabilitate an old stamp mil some
little distance below Victor, known as
the Lawrence plant. l had heard of
this scheme and had talked TO Stats
about it, Charlie was secretary of the
company. | went down there 10 get a
job and bumped into Ed Holden, who
was running the business as the chief
executive. Dawson Hawkins was SUI
perintendent. / saw them start on
practically the first reconstruction of
that old plant, which proved to be the
one in which the chlorination process
that took so much gold out of the
Cripple Creek ores was developed.
COLONIZATION was ahead of cyanida-
ton. John E. Rothwell had been en-
gagged as consulting engineer, and had
come down from the Golden Reward
in the Black Hills, where he had been
putting in a barrel COLONIZATION plant
What appointment did you obtain?
I started to work at the Lawrence
plant as assayef and, as time went on,
got more deeply into the technical de-
partment and pretty soon | was doing
all the chemical work. Finally the
chiefs of the metallurgical department,
Rothwell, Hawkins and all the rest of
them went away, and | was the chem
list and metallurgist for the plant
That must have been in 1894, for |
remember examining the Elkton and
going down to the Lawrence plant
with Dawson Hawkins, who introduce
ed us. DO you remember?
Yes, I do. sThat was in the fall of
1894 l stayed there until the latter
part of 1895, when the plant burned
down.
But chlorination had won foot
hold, had it not?
Out of the Lawrence experience
grew the MacNeil and Penrose in
stallations at Colorado City. The Gill
ette plant, a small chlorination mill
was built in the meantime at Grassy
by Ned Hawkins a brother of Dawson
Hawkins Dawson had left Lawrence,
what he was associated with his bro
ther Ned for a while in building this
Gillette plant.
After the Lawrence plant was de-
stroyed, MaeNeil got together an
other organization, using the data
from the Lawrence experience. and or
ganiZed the Colorado Philadelphia
Reduction company, which built what
was called the Colorado plant. That
was the first big chlorination plant in
Colorado, and was at Colorado City.
Later they built a still larger plant,
called the Standard, also at Colorado
City.
In the meantime, Argall had built
his metallic extraction cyanide plant
at Florence; and then others followed.
The whole metalhrgical trend for
Cripple Creek ores, outside of Argall's
work, was toward chlorination. The |
National mill was built at Florence,
and was good sized plant; the
Union, which was very large plant |
was also built there; and about the |
same time the Portland mill was built |
The Lawrence mill was the nucleus |
from which grew the reduction works |
that for great many years. treated |
nearly all of the Cripple Creek output
Argall's plant was closed down when |
the United States Refining and Re-
duction company was organized, but
he lived to see his ideas reestablished !
although along somewhat different |
lines.
The burning of the Lawrence plant |
was the end of my experience in the
Cripple Creek district then made |
some examinations for Captain De
Lamar, who owned a large interest In
this Lawrence plant, but he did not