MINES AND MINING 



Ninety per cent of the mineral 9utput of the 

 Pacific Coast is represented by four items: 



Fuel $64,478,524 



Gold 44,407,282 



Structural materials 21,904,369 



Copper . 16,288,741 



The remainder of the production is in widely 

 varied form. California is the most important 

 North American producer of quicksilver, and 

 Alaska has the only important tin mine. Silver 

 and lead are not mined in any large quantities on 

 the Pacific Coast, though in eastern British Co- 

 lumbia there is a thriving industry and in the Coeur 

 d'Alene, barely outside the state of Washington, 

 is one of the world's great lead-silver districts, and 

 at Tonopah, in western Nevada, there is a large 

 silver production. The Comstock lode, nearby and 

 easily accessible en route to or from California, 

 produced so much silver as to disturb seriously 

 the world's financial balance. On the Coast itself, 

 however, silver is not common, though almost all 

 the metals and non-metallic minerals of economic 

 importance occur in the region and many of them 

 are produced. It is not likely that in any period 

 of present character the dominance of fuels, gold, 

 copper and building materials will be challenged. 



While the days of gold easily W9n from shallow 

 placers have gone, gold mining is still a great indus- 

 try and it is now based upon deposits that assure it 

 a long life. The dredging fields, it is true, will be 

 exhausted in a few years by the great 16-cubic-foot 

 buckets used on modern boats, but the quartz mines 

 grow in importance rather than the reverse. The 

 reason is that each new device, each increase in 

 scale of operations, so lowers the cost of production 

 as automatically to convert into ore much that was 

 previously too lean to rank as more than waste. 

 When mining began at Juneau, small veins of quartz 

 containing gold to the value of $20 per ton or more 

 were worked, just as even richer veins have been, 

 within a few years, opened near Sitka. Such veins 

 are quickly exhausted, but the Alaska Juneau is now 

 preparing to mine ore worth but $1.35 per ton net, 

 and is counting on treating 12,000 tons per day. On 

 this basis the supply is considered adequate for 300 

 years. Two neighboring mines, the Alaska Gastineau 

 and the Ebners, are likewise arranging for whole- 

 sale production.* 



* Juneau is easily accessible by comfortable steamers 

 through the famous inland passage from Seattle and Van- 

 couver. Connections from San Francisco by boat and train 

 are excellent. 



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