64 SOUTHWESTERN NEVADA AND EASTERN CALIFORNIA. 
the water flowing from an abandoned tunnel southwest of the mill at 
Montezuma deposits considerable limonite and is so charged with 
ferrous sulphate that animals will scarcely drink it. 
In several of the older mines and prospects water, both good and 
bad, was encountered at a depth of 30 feet. The mines will prob- 
ably require pumps, but abundant fuel surrounds them. Goldfield, 
the railroad terminus, is 9 miles distant, the road being fairly good. 
The Lida mining district was organized August 28, 1871, and in 
ilif succeeding decade some rich surface pockets of horn silver and 
silver-bearing galena were removed. The ore. probably picked.- ran 
from $500 to si. ooo per ton. It is said that the values decreased at 
depths of 200 to 300 feet. In the latter part of L904 and the early 
pari of L905, the attention of mining men having been turned to 
southwestern Nevada, old mine- were reopened and new locations 
made. Unfortunately, at the time of the writer's visit (Decembers 
1905), the principal prospects were closed through litigation, and in 
many cases pumps and ladders had been removed. The prospects 
are situated partly outside the area surveyed and partly on the easj 
slope of Monni Macgruder to the south and southeast of the village. 
The Florida-Goldfield Mining Company's shaft is near the mouth 
of a gulch which joins the Lida Valley about one-half mile below 
the village. When visited, the shaft, L50 feet deep, was Idled with 
water within 80 feet of the surface. The ore on the dump includes 
Cambrian limestone rather heavily impregnated with iron pyrites 
and pyrite inclosed in veins of coarsely crystalline white calcite and 
in white quartz veinlets. In some specimens galena and light- 
brown zinc blende are associated with the quartz veinlets carrying 
pyrite. Chalcopyrite, an apparently still more uncommon sulphide, 
is in place- superficially altered to malachite and azurite. The 
lime-lone cut by the quartz vein has been more or less silicified. An 
old open cut above this shaft shows a zone of brecciated limestone 4 
feet in width healed by innumerable connecting quartz veinlets in 
which the ore- mentioned occur. On the dump of the Thanksgiv- 
ing mine quartz masses and veinlets cutting similar limestone were 
examined. The quartz contains much pyrite and less chalcopyrite. 
The sulphides of the Lida deposits are in part fissure fillings and in 
part impregnations of the country rock, while the oxidized ores appeal 
to be largely replacements of limestone. The oxidized zone is. for a 
desert country, very shallow. 
In the early days of mining in this district considerable hunches 
of oxidized ore were hauled to Austin and Belmont. It is scarcer! 
probable that all these pockets have been found, and with the 
improved transportation facilities such deposits should pay well. 
