CENTEAL AND EASTERN NEVADA. 409 



SECTION IV. 



GEOLOGY or THE WHITE PINE DISTRICT. 



BY ARNOLD HAGUE. 



Tlie White Pine mining district is in the eastern portion and not far from 

 midway between the northern and southern boundaries of the State. Ac- 

 cording to Lieutenant Wheeler's observations, made in tiie summer of 1869, 

 Treasure Peak, about which the principal mining operations are centered, is 

 in latitude 39° 14' and longitude 115° 27' west from Greenwich. 



Hamilton, the principal business town in the district, is 120 miles dis- 

 tant from Austin, by way of the traveled roads, and a few miles south of due 

 east from that point. It is 110 miles, in nearly a southerly direction, from 

 Elko, the nearest station on the Central Pacific railroad, 468 miles from 

 Sacramento. Communication is sustained between Elko and White Pine 

 by means of several stage and freighting lines, on roads that are tolerably 

 good during the greater part of the year. 



The White Pine Mountains are a prolongation to the south of the Hum- 

 boldt chain ; the main range of the Great Basin, in point of breadth and ele- 

 vation, lying between the Wahsatch, of Utah, and the Sierra Nevada, of Cal- 

 ifornia. From the Humboldt River the range extends south for nearly one 

 hundred miles in an almost unbroken line of high rugged peaks, rising 5,000 

 or 6,000 feet above the adjacent plain; then falling away gradually, it only ap- 

 pears as a few low, irregular, broken ridges, formed by gentle, imdulating 

 folds in the strata of the overlying limestone. These ridges rise with an easy 

 slope to an elevation of only a few hundred feet above the valleys, and may 

 be readily crossed at almost any point. About ten miles to the north of 

 Treasure Hill the mountains rise gently until they culminate in Pogonip 

 Mountain; then they commence to descend more abruptly, and six miles to 

 the south again become quite low. This isolated, mountainous group, be- 

 tween the two low depressions in the range, is known as the White Pine 

 Mountains. 



The White Pine mining district includes an area of twelve miles square, 

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