TITANIFEROUS    IRON    ORE    OF    IRON    MOUNTAIN,   WYOMING.       211 
COMMERCIAL    POSSIBILITIES     OF    THE     ORE. 
The  immense  ore  body  at  Iron  Mountain,  extending  1 }  miles  with  an 
average  width  of  perhaps  175  feet,  is,  like  granite,  an  igneous  rock  and 
is  likely  to  hold  its  width  for  a  great  depth  from  the  surface  or  even, 
perhaps,  to  thicken  somewhat  with  increasing  depths.  Chugwater 
Creek  has  cut  a  deep  channel  through  the  ore,  and  in  consequence  con- 
ditions are  favorable  for  open-pit  mining.  A  narrow-gage  railroad 
could  be  built  from  the  Colorado  and  Southern  Railroad  at  Iron  Moun- 
tain to  the  deposit  or,  at  considerably  greater  expense,  a  broad-gage 
road  could  be  constructed.  The  cost  of  fuel  in  this  portion  of  Wyo- 
ming is  surprisingly  high  in  view  of  the  proximity  of  coal  mines. 
Chugwater  Creek  is  too  small  a  stream  to  produce  cheap  electric 
power,  which,  however,  might  be  obtained  from  some  of  the  Colorado 
power  companies. 
In  the  present  day  smelter  practice  iron  ores  with  such  high  tita- 
nium content  are  practically  valueless,  but  progress  is  being  made  in 
the  treatment  of  these  ores,  and  at  some  future  time  the  deposit  at 
Iron  Mountain  will  doubtless  be  of  great  commercial  importance. 
Titanium  is  very  undesirable  in  iron  ores  because  of  its  refractory 
character,  its  ores  being  practically  unreducible  at  the  temperature  of 
blast  or  open-hearth  furnaces.  As  a  constituent  of  iron  and  steel, 
however,  titanium  increases  toughness  and  tensile  strength.  In  con- 
sequence the  production  of  high-grade  iron  from  titaniferous  ores  is 
under  some  conditions  profitable.  Titaniferous  iron  ores  have  been 
successfully  smelted  in  Sweden,  England,  and  the  United  States,  but 
even  in  Sweden  the  cost  was  so  great  that  the  annual  output  has  grad- 
ually diminished,  until,  in  1892,  the  Taberg  mine  produced  but  40  tons 
of  pig  as  against  9,204  tons  in  1875.a  Mr.  A.  J.  Rossi5  in  the  early 
nineties  successfully  smelted  ores  with  20  per  cent  Ti02  in  smelters  of 
3-ton  daily  capacity.  Thirteen  years  after  the  publication  of  his  arti- 
cle, however,  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  verify  his  results  on  a  com- 
mercial scale. 
Some  attempts  to  separate  the  nontitaniferous  from  the  titanifer- 
ous ores  by  magnetic  processes  have  been  partially  successful.  The 
waste  of  iron,  however,  since  titaniferous  iron  itself  carries  consider- 
able iron,  is  so  great  that  the  process  is  commercially  a  failure.  This 
process  requires  fine  crushing,  and  hence,  subsequently,  briquetting. 
oHulst,  N.  P.,  Proc.  Lake  Superior  Mining  Institute,  vol.  10,  p.  40. 
b  Trans.  Am.  Inst.  Min.  Eng.,  vol.  21,  pp.  832-867,  1893. 
