The Eureka sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1902-current, 1922-09-30
BIG COMSTOCK MILL
BEGINS OPERATIONS

rumDling OF the DIG mhi iOSOneJ
| completed in Virginia City was like
the first shot of the Revolutionary
War: IT was heard around the world.
Not long ago Virginia City was
classed as one of the ghost cities of
| the west. To-day there is in opera
ton there the largest gold and silver
cyanide plant in the United States,
which has started the work of recov-
ering the precious metals from the
millions of tons of low grade ore OF
the famous lode.
This will come as welcome news
to the followers of the mining game,
as we'll as all Nevadans, who know by
heart every tale of the romance OF
the most famous silver camp in the
world. II comes as a fulfillment OF
the prediction of old time miners who
have staked their lives on the fact
that the Comstock would come back,
doggedly staying with their tasks In
Virginia City when prominent engin-
GERS had stated hat the fame of the
lode was all in the past, and that
there was nothing there.
President Buckley Wells and his
associates of the United Comstock
Mines Company were hosts Saturday
to a large gathering which was pres
ent t witness the putting in motion
of the big plant.
Prominent mining men and engin-
GERS from eastern cities, California
and Nevada, State officials, mine own
ers and operators, railroad execu-
tives, business and professional men
to the number of several hundred
were in attendance. Several ladies
we're members of the party of mining
| engineers on the way to the 126th
meeting of the American Institute of
Mining and Metallurgical Engineers
to be held in San Francisco, Septem-
Der 1929.
First on the days program was a
trip through the haulage tunnel from
the portal at Comstock to the Imper-
ial shaft, within five hundred feet
from the north end of the s,250-foot
tunnel. The visitors rode on fiat cars
on each of which had been construct
ed bench seats. The train of cars
was hauled by an electric locomotive.
From the station at the 700-foot level
of the Imperial the visitors were taxi
en- to the 20O-foot level and there
conducted through the drifts and var
ious crosscuts. Well informed guides
explained the methods of mining
adopted in getting out with dispatch
ample quantities of ore needed to
keep the milling plant in continuous
operation when it reaches its intend
ed capacity of at least 1000 ton per
day. Step by step the process was
unfolded. from the mining, loading
into ten ton capacity cars, which are
turned bottomside up ove a massive
ore bin, into and through the coarse
crushing plant, the fine grinding and
concentration plant, and cyanide
plant. Accordingly, rock was seen in
place, in the cars hauling it to the
ore chutes and On it's journey in larg-
err ears from the mine to the big bin
at the coarse grinding plant. 1t was
followed through the big ~crushers,
with it's many elassiiers for primary
wash to remove soluble salts, ball-peb
mills and Plato tables. Next came
the tank house, 325x296h feet, COW
ering approximately IA acres. Be-
meath this roof are the forty redwood
tanks with diameters as great as six
ty feet and depth of twenty-four feet.
Here is also found the filter plant
with it's sixteen concrete tanks, TWEEN
~ty-seven feet long by nine feet wide
and eleven feet deep-all cast as one
monolithic block. 1t is of course in
teresting to know that forty ton of
cyanide is required in making the
20, 0 tons of cyanide solution for
the initial filling or charging of the
tanks, which are held together by
forty-six miles of hoops. The roof of
the tank house is designed for a for
ty-pound snow load per square foot
and a maximum wind load of twenty
pounds per square foot. The struc-
tural steel used in construction of
the tank house totalled 700 tons. The
precipitation and refinery building is
a separate structure 112x32 feet and
t~wenty-four feet high. The furnace
Is one of the parts made at the Vir-
ginia & Truckee shops in this city.
According to the statement made
by one of the company's engineers
the grinding plants, tank house, and
various other buildings and shops
making the big milling institution
cover approximately five and one
half acres.
The total motor installation for
the plant is $4,000 horsepower.
Last December the News was in
formed that the United Comstock
Mines Company at that time had in
sight 2,250,000 tons of low-grade
ore. The experts figured average as