GOLD MINING IN COLOEADO. 531 



fathom of ground in one day. Eight men have supplied the stamping mill 

 with not less than 20 tons of ore per day for two months. The ground is 

 comparatively dry and the costs of timbering are light. The mine is provided 

 with hoisting machinery consisting of a small portable engine that drives a 

 simple winding apparatus by belting, in the common way. The shaft-house 

 is a large stone building, originally designed to contain a stamping mill that is 

 not yet set up. The power provided is sufficient for both hoisting and stamp- 

 ing on a small basis of operations. 



Burroughs Lode. — The Burroughs lode is about 400 feet north of the 

 Grardner. Its outcrop is further down the slope of the hill and about 100 to 

 150 feet above the bed of the Nevada Gulch. Its course is almost exactly 

 parallel to that of the Gardner, being, where observed by the writer, north 85 '^ 

 east, true. Its dip is nearly vertical, or slightly to the south, its average incli- 

 nation in the Ophir mine being 85°. It is one of the earliest discovered and 

 most developed lodes in the Territory, the main shaft of the Ophir mine having 

 reached, in the summer of 1869, a depth of 630 feet. It is opened for a con- 

 tinuous length of more than 2,000 feet, and worked along that distance to depths 

 varying from 200 to 500 or 600 feet. Unfortunately, it has the practical dis- 

 advantage, in common with many other valuable lodes of Colorado, of being 

 subdivided into many different claims, the greater number of v^^hich are too 

 short to make independent mines and only serve as obstacles to a consolidated 

 and comprehensive management. One company, the First National, although 

 owning more than 600 feet of the lode, hold it in three or four disconnected 

 portions, between which several other claims intervene, a condition that must 

 greatly increase the cost of operations, if not presenting an effectual barrier to 

 systematic development. 



The following list shows the claims on that part of the lode that is dis- 

 tinctly traced and opened by mining work, beginning on the east and proceed- 

 ing toward the west end. The length of each claim is given and the depth 

 attained by their work at the time when the accompanying section was pre- 

 pared in 1868, since which little or no important change has been made : 



