252 GEOLOGY OF THE BLACK HILLS. 



Hills, to prevent any stragglers from working the bar during their enforced 



absence : 



Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, 



August 30, 1875. 

 To the Editor of the Inter- Ocean : 



After prospecting a short time in the park we moved to Spring Creek or Jenney's 

 Gulch, and on the morning of the 20tk of Jnly we commenced prospecting Stand-off 

 Bar. We did not work more than half an hour until we panned out 25 cents to the 

 pan, found coarse gold, and ran across the bar about 35 feet. From the last pan of 

 dirt taken out of the face of the drift we got one pennyweight and three grains, or what 

 we term a good dollar, to the pan. This is about one mile up Jenney's Gulch, above 

 Professor Jenney's discovery. We panned several pans that weighed from 25 cents to 

 50 cents and from 78 cents to 93 cents to the pan ; it ranged all the way from 10 cents 

 to $1. * * * We prospected also on Castle Creek, and have proven beyond a 

 doubt there are good placer-mines there as well as on Spring Creek. We also found 

 good six-dollar-per-day diggings on Bapid Creek; and had not the military order 

 arrested our work, we would soon have had plenty of the yellow metal out of the 

 ground to have shown the world that the Hills are very rich. While we were prepar- 

 ing sluice-boxes, whip-sawing lumber, &c, preparatory to working our ground, we got 

 the " grand military shake," and had to leave our claims and the Hills. * * * 



JOHN W. ALLEN. 



Having returned to the Hills after the withdrawal of the military 



forces, Mr. Allen writes me, under date January 2, 1876 : 



Our bar (Stand-off) pays $1 in gold per hour per man employed ; have on hand 

 26 ounces of bankable gold dust taken out inside of three weeks. 



Mr. James Allen, of Cheyenne, who visited Spring Creek at that time, 



writes : 



I prospected ten pans of dirt from Stand-off Bar and got for my trouble $5.35. 1 

 am perfectly delighted with the country. If anything, it is better and more extensive 

 than has been represented. A company known as the "Montana company" had only 

 been in the gulch three weeks when I got there ; during that time they had built two 

 houses, cut a ditch near a quarter of a mile in length, whip-sawed their lumber for 

 sluices and set them running, and had taken out near $1,000 in nice, coarse, bankable 

 dust. 



The claims worked by this company are situated below Stand-off Bar, 



and I understand that the pay dirt was obtained by a drift run in 50 feet 



on the rim-rock of an elevated bar, as high as Si 10 being obtained in one 



day's work by three men. The companies could not run their sluices more 



than six hours during the warmer part of the day, owing to cold and frost, 



yet obtained from $6 to $7 per day per man as the result of this limited 



work. 



