464 GEOLOGY AND GOLD DEPOSITS OF THE CRIPPLE CREEK DISTRICT. 
above and below the Flat vein into some of the other nearly vertical fissures. Still 
other fissures contain ore only at their intersection with the Flat vein. The flat 
ore body may be regarded as a special case of the local expansion or coalescence 
of ore bodies at the intersections of lodes. The mine affords several examples of 
such ore bodies at the intersections of nearly vertical fissure zones. The intersec¬ 
tions of such lodes with the Flat vein appear to have supplied unusual facilities 
for ore deposition, some of the richest ore having been stoped from this body. 
The value, as usual, was in the small fissures of the sheeted zones, the calaverite 
being accompanied by fluorite and partly oxidized. 
VALUE AND CHARACTER OF THE ORE. 
The average value of the ore produced by Stratton’s Independence mine has 
varied from a maximum of $132 a ton in 1895 to $20 in 1903. During March, 
1904, 4,650 tons of ore were shipped, which averaged about $30 a ton. Some of 
the ore formerly stoped from the Flat vein is said to have been wonderfully rich, 
though no actual figures for the value of carload lots have been obtained. A 
small sample bag of ore stolen from this vein and afterwards recovered was found 
to contain $80 in gold. 
There were comparatively few places where the actual occurrence of ore could 
be well studied in the Independence mine at the time of visit. The richest ore, 
on the whole, occurred in the Flat vein as calaverite associated with fluorite in 
very narrow fractures in the breccia, and probably to some extent in the porous 
metasomatically altered granitic fragments traversed by these fissures. This ore 
was partly oxidized. 
The ore of the Independence vein is of the same general character as that in 
the No. 2 vein of the Portland. Owing to the abundance of granitic fragments 
in the breccia along the course of this vein, the ore partakes somewhat of the char¬ 
acter of ore found in the massive granite. The granitic fragments alongside and 
between the fissures are altered to spongy aggregates consisting chiefly of secondary 
orthoclase or valencianite, with fluorite and considerable pyrite in small crystals. 
Calaverite and perhaps sylvanite occur in the fissures of the sheeted zone, usually 
with quartz and fluorite, and in the metasomatically altered granitic breccia as 
particles usually too small to be detected with the naked eye. 
The ore of the No. 6 vein is similar in mineralogical character to the Diamond 
ore in the Portland mine, though the metasomatic alteration has been much less 
extensive in the Independence mine. 
Some very rich ore, consisting of little irregular stringers of nearly solid cala¬ 
verite in dark sheeted breccia, has come from the Emerson vein near level 4. The 
calaverite is intimately associated with P3 T rite, molybdenite, and a little quartz 
and fluorite. Pyrite is also finely disseminated through the breccia near the vein, 
but so far as known is not auriferous. 
* In many places ore occurs in plionolite dikes, nearly always as calaverite in 
very narrow fissures associated with fluorite and quartz as gangue. 
Galena is rarely visible in the Independence ore, but is said to have occurred 
in considerable abundance in the Bobtail vein above level 2. It also occurs spar¬ 
ingly in the Emerson vein just above level 7. 
