16 
Sulphur  Industry  of  the  West. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Jan.,  1887. 
THE  SULPHUR  INDUSTRY  OF  THE  WEST. 
By  Harry  C.  Myers. 
Read  at  the  Pharmaceutical  Meeting,  December  21. 
The  mineral  deposits  of  our  great  West  have  for  many  years  at- 
tracted a  great  deal  of  attention,  both  in  this  country  and  abroad. 
Besides  the  common  minerals  and  compounds  that  chemists  acknowl- 
edge as  existing,  there  are  beds  of  pure,  white  kaolin,  mineral  wax  or 
ozocerite,  borax,  petroleum,  bituminous  coal  veins  forty  feet  thick,  rich 
sulphur  deposits,  etc.  The  subject  to  which  this  article  is  confined  is 
sulphur.  Sulphur,  I  believe,  is  not  recognized  by  text-books  as  exist- 
ing to  any  extent  in  this  country,  and  yet,  in  the  Territory  of  Utah, 
there  is,  beyond  doubt,  the  richest  and  largest  known  sulphur  deposit 
in  the  world. 
Sulphur  is  of  volcanic  origin,  and  existed  in  the  interior  of  the  earth  ; 
being  heated  there  it  escaped  in  the  form  of  vapor,  and  was  precipitated 
on  coming  in  contact  with  the  cold  air.  In  order  to  refine  this  sulphur  it 
is  but  necessary  to  repeat  the  process  of  nature  by  vaporizing  and  con- 
densing. 
It  would  seem  by  the  extent  and  purity  of  this  deposit,  however, 
that  at  some  remote  period  the  sulphur  must  have  poured  out  in  a  mol- 
ten mass  and  flowed  like  lava  into  the  valley  beneath.  This  enor- 
mous deposit  was  located  in  about  1870,  by  the  Government  Surveyor, 
and  is  situated  two  hundred  miles  south  of  Salt  Lake  City,  between 
the  counties  of  Millard  and  Beaver  on  Cove  Creek. 
The  deposit  is  about  two  thousand  feet  square,  and  shafts  have  been 
sunk  in  different  places  from  thirty  to  sixty  feet  deep  without  reaching 
the  bottom  of  the  deposit ;  the  depth  is  as  yet  unknown.  It  is  easy  to 
see  by  useing  these  figures  and  multiplying  by  the  weight  of  a  cubic 
foot  of  sulphur,  which  is  over  a  hundred  pounds,  that  this  deposit  con- 
tains easily  ten  million  tons  of  sulphur.  The  poorest  ore  yet  found  in 
this  locality  contains  40  per  cent,  sulphur,  and  is  almost  black  in  color ; 
but  as  the  90  per  cent,  ore  is  inexhaustible  the  poorer  ores  are  disre- 
garded. These  ores  were  analyzed  at  Case  School  of  Applied  Science, 
by  a  familiar  process,  and  found  to  be  absolutely  free  from  arsenic  and 
antimony,  which  cannot  be  said  of  our  imported  Sicily  sulphur.  The 
sulphur  in  this  deposit  is  in  strata,  measuring  from  eleven  to  twenty- 
two  inches  in  thickness,  and  as  it  is  a  surface  deposit  it  is  worked 
much  like  the  quarrying  of  stone.    It  is  then  refined  by  a  new  process, 
