APPENDIX SS. 1827 



and a great mass had escaped before discovery was made. Whatever its geological 

 formation, the owner has secured it by patent and takes most profitable exercise in 

 occasionally getting it out and hauling it to the mill, the ore being a high-grade galena 

 with sulphurets, and assaying fron $200 to $900. 



The facilities for reducing ore throughout the district are totally inadequate and 

 much of the ore is packed to Lake City ; the only reduction works about Ouray being 

 a smelter of a capacity of 10 tons a day, a sampling mill also existing. Chlorination 

 works will undoubtedly be soon erected here, but there will always exist plenty of 

 custom for amalgamation works since the ores of brittle silver which frequently occur 

 are not reducible by the x3rocess of lixiviation. 



This point is pre-eminently the one for the location of works for the reduction of ore. 

 It is in every direction down hill from the mines ; water-power is fine, timber is abun- 

 dant, spar and iron ore for fluxing abound in the mountains within a few miles above 

 town, and a vein of coal, reported as 5 feet thick, lies scarcely over 6 miles distant, 

 whereas coal used at Lake City has to be hauled over 75 miles. 



Wholly unlike the situation of the other mining districts considered, agriculture is 

 possible and very closely approaches the town. Less than 3 miles below, the river 

 enters upon the beautiful and extensive valley of the Uncompahgre, and within less 

 than 6, the cultivation of cereals may be pursued with fine success. With its immensely 

 high and rugged mountains, and so abrupt a descent into a low and gentle valley, there 

 exists unusual diversity of landscape scenery, with mineral and agricultural wealth 

 almost meeting in an extraordinary manner. Ouray and the districts of which it is the 

 center, possess more flattering prospects for the future than elsewhere were observed. 

 The region to the north is the land of the Ute, but must in the near future be in part 

 wrested from him, as was the San Juan proper but a few years ago. Our treaty stipu- 

 lations, rarely kept inviolate, will not avail. The land is too valuable to remain 

 unsettled. 



THE GALENA DISTRICT 



lies to the east of the last treated, touching it in the southeastern part of the Uncom- 

 pahgre, and is but a part of the Lake Fork and the Uncompahgre Mountains, being in 

 part the mineral belt drained by Hensen Creek. Its eastern line is the western boundary 

 of the Lake District. 



Of the most valuable lodes of this section, the nature of whose ore will be at once 

 known from the name of the district itself, the Dolly Varden, Silver Chord, Ocean 

 Wave, and Boston, are some of those farthest advanced. At timber line, beyond the 

 source of Hensen Creek, is Mineral City, also called Mineral Point, already mentioned, 

 between 20 and 21 miles from Lake City, while a little less than half way lies Capitol 

 City, a promising mining camp. 



Beyond the Ute and Ule the mines of the Crooke's, and 2 miles down from Capitol 

 is the Ocean Wave, largely owned in Kansas City, a very valuable lode and finely de- 

 veloped, there being over 600 feet of tunneling, shafting, and connecting winzes. The 

 value of this mine may be estimated from the fact that they sold 32 tons of ore, first- 

 class or selected rock, to the Messrs. Crooke for reduction at the rate of 218 ounces. 



Near Capitol City numbers of rich strikes had been made, and there existed a lively 

 camp of fully 150. The lode attracting most attention was the Silver Chord, about a 

 mile from town. In a vein of 4 feet there is a magnificent pay streak of 16 inches of 

 mineral interspersed with native silver ; ore running nearly 600 ounces silver was met 

 in large bodies ; some of the specimens taken out were magnificent. They were flecked 

 throughout the narrow seam or streak with native silver, while the rest of the vein held 

 high-grade galena, with gray copper and brittle silver. The owners asserted that they 

 were not picked, which was not at all credible ; but be that as it may, they were the 

 handsomest specimens of silver-bearing rock Ave have ever seen anywhere. 



Mineral City, aptly named in part, a metropolis as yet in embryo, of some 250 per- 

 sons, was found the center of rich mines and valuable interests, some very heavy com- 

 panies operating here. At Lake City tunneling contracts can be easily gotten at $15 

 per foot, while at this point they entail an expense of $20 to $25. A Milwaukee com- 

 pany owns 22 mines near by, every one patented. Capt. E. W. Burrows, after whom 

 the park of that name was called, possessing numbers of mines there, has very large 

 interests near Mineral, 20 mines in all, from simple locations to the most advanced con- 

 dition, which was a 95-foot tunnel on the Boston. The fissures are well defined, as 

 far as developed, and show the average high-grade ores of the section. 



A New York company, F. J. Pratt, superintendent, was the most extensive in its 

 operations. Upon the Boston, nearby, $10,000 had been expended in development, and 

 they were beginning upon a tunnel site to penetrate Mineral Point Mountain, for the 

 intersection of 27 fine lodes. The contract for 1,000 feet of the tunnel was closed at 

 the time of our visit for $21 per foot, a remarkably low figure for the length. 



On Copper Mountain, near the head of Hensen Creek, is the Dolly Varden, belong- 

 ing to Mr. Van Geison, of Del Norte and Lake City. As people do in a mining country 

 when they want their mine developed, are uncertain about its value, and don't like the 



