204 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



a diversity of ores from which a favorable 

 furnace mixture could always be made, 

 and when matte smelting, with its 

 cleaner slags and purer copper was intro- 

 duced, Bisbee found itself with an un- 

 limited supply of sulphur. At one 

 time — but it was of short duration — 

 Globe and Clifton could mine a richer 

 grade of ore than Bisbee, which now 

 enjoys the possession of a fusible ore of 

 an average high grade of between five 

 and six per cent. 



The first period of the prosperity of 

 the Copper Queen terminated abruptly 

 in 1884, with the exhaustion of the first 

 large ore body. Its apparent isolation 

 after maintaining such permanency for 

 four hundred feet, and its sudden termi- 

 nation in limestone, leaving no apparent 

 clue to guide in the search for another 

 ore body, was the first warning we had of 

 the eccentric deposition of these copper 

 deposits in their limestone nidus. They 

 are confined to a series of about four 

 hundred feet in thickness of the lower 

 Carboniferous series and upper Devonian 

 series, but owing to their erratic dis- 

 tribution, the cost of finding them often 

 exceeds the cost of the actual extraction 

 of the ore when found. By following 

 certain trails blazed by the geologists 

 along fault planes, exploration is now 

 conducted with more certainty than 

 formerly, but the horizontal maps of the 

 ore bodies, as yet discovered, exhibit to 

 the eye of the uninitiated that the search 

 for ore bodies in this district is a more 

 capricious task than in most mines. 



Within these beds of ore-bearing lime- 

 stone, decay has reached to a great 

 depth. They have been partially ex- 

 plored for ore, by the Copper Queen and 

 the Calumet and Arizona Mining Com- 

 panies on their dip for a distance of a 

 mile and a half from their outcrop; and at 

 a vertical depth of eighteen hundred feet 



from the surface, the ores are completely 

 or partially oxidized, and the limestone 

 and the intrusive porphyrites in which 

 they occur are extensively decayed. 

 Masses of unaltered pyritic ore are en- 

 countered in the Devonian and Silurian 

 limestone, which underlie the Carboni- 

 ferous, but those as yet discovered have 

 not been large. It is estimated that in 

 searching for ore and the development 

 of known ore bodies, there have been 

 driven by the Copper Queen Company 

 two hvmdred and thirty-five miles of 

 horizontal and vertical drifts and raises. 



The disposition of the ore bodies being 

 so erratic, more than the usual mining 

 risks have occurred. At one time the 

 fate of the district was in the balance. 

 The summer after Queen commenced 

 operations, Messrs. James and Dodge 

 bought the Atlanta claim, which was 

 parallel to the Copper Queen, and to- 

 ward which the ore body of the Copper 

 Queen was dipping. Four years were 

 expended in drifting, running tunnels 

 and following stringers of ore from the 

 surface, which ended in nothing. Mean- 

 while the Copper Queen ore body had 

 ended abruptly, before reaching the 

 Atlanta side line. The only other com- 

 pany, the Neptune, had exhausted both 

 its capital and credit, and had abandoned 

 work; and therefore, for a period dark 

 clouds of despondency overhung the 

 district. 



But almost simultaneously, after the 

 Copper Queen had driven an exploratory 

 drift in barren limestone for five hundred 

 feet, and the Atlanta Mining Company 

 after four years of disappointment was 

 in despair, both companies struck the 

 same new ore body. Instead of quarrel- 

 ing as to ownership, under the law of the 

 apex, they decided to unite. The At- 

 lanta Mining Company merged itself 

 into the Copper Queen, reappearing in 



