The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1918-10-03

and from the accumulation Of
tailings along the river and in
dams built to protect the river chan
mel has grown to be branch of the
mining industry of considerable i'm
portance and increasing profit. These
dump and dam tailings are for the
most part the accumulation of many
Years, covering a period when milling
processes were crude compared with
the highly developed metallurgical
skill that rules in the mills of the
Coeur d'Alene district today. In the
early days it was not uncommon for
so per cent of the values to go down
the creek in the tailngs. Most of this
was lost forever, but after few years
the accumulation of tailings in the
river channel resulted in overflowing
adjacent land and became a menace
to property that had to be overcome
by the operating mining companies
One of the successful plans adopted
was the building of dams which serv4
ed as great settling ponds for the
tailings About the same time the
companies generally began banking
their coarse tailings instead of per-
mitting them to pass direct into the
creek. Some of them contain suffi-
cent values to justify reworking and
this is now being done either by the
owning companies or by leasers, the
values being usually recovered
through fine crushing. table concen
tration and flotation. In some cases
the water of the river is diverted in
to large settling ponds in which ac
cumulates masses of slime concen-
trates, from which they are conveyed
to mills erected for this particular
purpose and the values recovered by
table concentration and through flo
tation, sometimes only the latter. For
many years hand jgs were used sue
cessfully in working the tailings, but
the closer recovery by the operating
companies and the elimination of the
coarse tailings has to a great extent
rendered this process Improbable.
Three TaiIinss Companies.
Three companies, operating in wide
ly separated parts of the district, all
under the management of c. l..
Hewitt, have solved the problem of
recovering lost values in tailings, one
of which has already earned a sub
stantial profit and the other two on
bn nf Mr Ho1yitt'c
first success was in the North Idaho
Metals company, which is operating
en- the river about half way between
Wallace and Mullan. When he took
hold of the proposition in the sum-
mer of 1917 about 10000 tons Of tail
ings had been impounded in set
Ting pond, assay value of which was
SIS per cent lead, SIS per cent zinc and
ounces silver. After much expert
menting a process was evolved which
successfully separated the lead and
zinc by flotation, producing a lead
product that averages about go per
cent lead, per cent zinc and a zinc
product Of 35 per cent and lead IL
per cent. The plant has capacity OF
about 90 tons per day, from which Is
produced about Az tons of lead con-
centrate and tons of zinc. During
1917 the gross value Of shipments
was about $4,000.
On Government Gulch.
Another company under the man.
agement Of Mr. Hewitt Is the Mullan
Milling company which has lease on
the old Ontario dump, in Government
gulch below Kellogg This company
has recently completed mill Of 100
tons capacity, the process being re-
duced to fine crushing and recovery
by flotation. The few weeks the mill
has been running the operations have
been largely experimental, and the
results have been so satisfactory that
large profits seem now assured. The
dump under lease is estimated to con-
tain 100000 tons. the values being
lead-silver.
On Nine Mile.
The Spokane Metals Recovery COM
pany. Of which Mr. Hewitt is also
manager, Is preparing to rebuild It's
plant on Nine Mile which was recent
ny destroyed by fire. The company
4, II invested in this mill s22,5OO. and
ITS equipment consisted in general
terms Of rolls, jigs, tables and flota-
ton. A ball mill had been ordered
but fortunately had not arrived when
the fire occurred. The site of this
mill is on the east fork Of Nine Mile,