ARIZONA
MINES AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
ARIZONA has ever been the land
of the Golden Fleece. It was the lure of gold that induced the viceroy
of new Spain to send Fray
Marcos to spy out the land. It was the same irresistible impulse that
caused Coronado to brave desert and death in his expedition to the
legendary Cibola;and, though he returned to Mexico broken-hearted in
the belief that he had followed a will-of-the- wisp, nevertheless the treasure was always
there, but so securely locked
in the fastnesses of the hills that
its presence was not suspected. Little by little a few of the treasure chests of Mother
Earth were discovered and
opened; and, haltingly, with many hopes deferred and promises unfulfilled,
with many chance successes
and sudden fortunes, with riches
that came by accident, with riches that came only from patient toil and scientific
methods, mining in the State
has advanced until today Arizona leads the nation in the production of
metallic wealth.
It ought to make an interesting study, this romance of Arizona's treasure troves, yet
we must confess that as we
read over what has been written here—for this introduction is set down
last—we find much that is
prosaic.
The story of a mine after it is discovered—its transfers from one set of men to
another—is mostly names and
dates, and has usually the same fascination possessed by a chronology, as
for instance in Nehemiah:
"And Jeshua begat Joiakim," and
"Joiakim begat Eliashib," and "Eliashib begat Joida," and there you are. So we have
begun to wonder if the
reader, to get the true romance from a chapter on mining, should not do
considerable reading between
the lines. We see how the members of the new syndicate that acquired the
mine made a million dollars
in three months; but if the reader
of this chapter is like the writer, the sentence means but little, for to us a million
dollars is a wholly mythical
amount. Besides, it wasn't we
that got the million; we do not even know the man. It is hard to enthuse to the boiling
point about a million dollars
of unearned increment acquired by
a man you never even heard of before.
We would rather try to imagine how prospector John Doe felt as he followed up his line
of float. Would he find the
mother lode or not, and would it
be worth anything after he did find it?
The case of Richard Roe as, with
swinging pick, he follows his
tiny vein, also has its interest. Would it widen to great riches or would it
pinch out altogether? What
was in his mind that afternoon as
he crimped the edges of the cap about the fuse with his teeth? Certainly not that
the fulminate of mercury
might blow his fool head off. An
old powder man forgets that part. No, he was wondering just what he would do with the
million dollars he would get if the shot he was about to fire would open up a true fissure vein
about six feet wide that
would run five or six thousand dollars of gold to the ton. Some way we find it
easy to get en rapport with
that man. He hasn't acquired the
million dollars yet, he only imagines what he would do with the million dollars if
he did get it. Even a sheep
herder can feel that way. Then,
too, we can be interested in the unusual,though it be but a variation of the old
story of the burro, the mule
or the horse that led the prospector straight to the biggest mine in all the
country. (By the way, think of
all of the mines that would be
still undiscovered, and the fortunes that would be still unmade and undrunk if the
old-time prospectors had used
Fords, and all the burros had been
turned into "bastrama" and eaten, as they say the program is to be from now on.) Yet putting persiflage aside, there are
few stories bigger than those
concerning the lure of the
metals. Men have been crushed to death in drifts to obtain gold for a woman's
jewels—or to save a country;
they have been scorched at smelter mouths to reclaim silver for a magnate's
sideboard—or copper to carry
power across a continent. Perhaps
the biggest story of all is that which tells how one man, out of the strength of
his own mind and will, wrings
success where all others have
lost. A mine wrecks company after company; then conies a new syndicate with a master mind at its head, and failure is turned to
success It is a battle, not of cannon and sword, but of chemistry and modern efficiency. If
refractory
ores can be worked for so much the
fight is won, if the cost is
but a few cents more per ton, the fight is lost. The battle ground is the
laboratory, the strategists
are the chemists and the efficiency engineers.
Finally there is the part played by the man with the pick, a story of muscle and sweat
and danger. It would take a
Victor Hugo to depict that!
Returning to our narrative, we have seen how mineral locations along the present
Mexican Border were first
worked in a small way by the Spaniards
in the eighteenth century; we have also noted briefly the mining of Americans,
who, like Ehrenberg and
Poston, came into the Santa Cruz Valley in 1854; of the shafts that were
dug in spite of the hostility
of the savages; of the mills and
furnaces that were successfully constructed, though the lumber had to be whipsawed and brought from mountain tops and all the
machinery hauled over many
weary miles of desert. The
Ajo copper mines, in the southern part of the State, were operated in the fifties,
and the placers of the lower
Gila, worked about the same
time, yielded fortunes. In the second
year of the Civil War,
placers were discovered along the Colorado, and by reason of their being,
towns like La Paz, which was
situated on the Colorado, 124 miles
above Yuma, and once boasted of a population of five thousand people, sprang into
existence. The glory of La Paz was short lived, for Ehrenberg, six miles farther up the river,
on account of its better
steamboat landing, in 1863, took the population away from the earlier town
and left it an abode for owls
and coyotes. Before the
placer excitement ended, in 1864, $2,000,000 in gold had been taken from the
sands of Yuma County,
whereupon mining interests shifted to lodes.
In recent years placer mining has revived in Yuma County. In the Plomosa district, east
of the Colorado, in the Posas
Valley, from 1904 to 1912, gold
to the value of $32,314 has been taken from sand, and from other districts, from 1906
to 1912, $52,985.
In spite of the continual hostility of the Hualpais, who had the disagreeable habit of
shooting arrows at miners
from ambush, prospecting in Mojave
County began as early as 1858, and mines were worked in considerable numbers from
1863. There was every
evidence that the country was exceedingly
rich in minerals. From 1880 to 1883the county is said to have produced
$60,000 in gold and $485,000
in silver. According to Hinton, the product in 1887 was $200,000 per month.
One of the biggest of the
early discoveries was the Moss gold
mine, near Hardyville. It is reported that, in 1865, two tons of its ore netted $185,000
in gold. The McCracken and
Signal, in the southern part of
the county, were located in 1874, and yielded a total of over a million dollars before
they suspended operations in
1880. Hinton states that up to 1876, 2,000 claims had been recorded in
the county.
Mojave County is now dotted with rich mines, so many indeed that our limited space will
not permit even a recital of
the names. Mention, however, must
be made of the Tom Reed, in the Oat- man district, which in six years produced
over $4,000,000 in gold. The
Gold Roads is also a heavy producer
of the yellow metal. Valuable
turquoise deposits have been found near Mineral Park, southeast of Chloride. Both placer and lode mining were actively
engaged in during the early
years after the war, in Yavapai
County, which at that time included all of Arizona north of the Gila and east of
Yuma County.
About Prescott, gold indications were found all through the hills, and almost every
stream had rich placers. The
leading mining districts were Weaver,
Hassayampa, Lynx Creek, Turkey Creek, Humbug, Peck and Date Creek.
Bancroft gives the gold products of Yavapai, in 1873, as $103,600; and from 1880 to 1883
as $110,- 000. The silver
production in 1880-83 is given at nearly two million.
It is interesting to read the names that the early Yavapai miners gave the prospects from
which they hoped to derive
their fortunes. The sentimental ones chose such appellations as "Aurora," "Naiad Queen," "Minnehaha," "Mezeppa,"
"Sunrise" and "Sunset." Some
practical miners simply set
down their claims as "Brunson and Barnum," or "Hatz and Collier"; the more fanciful
christened their properties
the "Big Bug," "Black Jack," Little Joker," "Jack-on-the-Green," "Plug
Ugly" and the like. An
optimist records his mine as "
Hidden Treasure," while a pessimist
labels his, in advance,
"Little Fraud."
THE VULTURE
The greatest of all Yavapai
County's mines (now a part of
Maricopa) and indeed the richest gold mine of the State, was the Vulture,
situated eleven miles west of
Wickenburg. It was discovered in
1863 by Henry Wickenburg, who gave his name to the town. The old prospector
knew that he had a mine the
moment he saw it, for scattered
over the surface of the ground were pieces of quartz from which gold could be
picked out with a pocket
knife. There was no water at the
Vulture and all of the ore had to be hauled over a desert road to the Hassayampa
River, where it was reduced
in arastras which had been set up by contractors, who would buy the ore from
Wickenburg at the mine,
paying him fifteen dollars a ton
for it, and taking out the ore themselves. The main Vulture claim was sold to B. Phelps,
a New York mining man, in
1866, for $75,000. Thereafter it
changed hands many times before the lode was finally exhausted. It has-been said
that altogether $10,000,000
in gold was taken from the mine.
Other prominent Yavapai mines included the Tiger, the Peck, the Tip Top, and the
Senator, Octave, and Congress. The richest placers of the county were at Lynx Creek where over a
million dollars was taken
from the gravel. Altogether, Rich
Hill, in the Weaver district, yielded a half a million dollars in nuggets, from an acre,
on its four-thousand foot
summit, and another half a million
from the gulches on its sides. Placer mining in the Weaver district from 1905 to 1912
produced $55,417 in gold.
A half million dollar smelter, now operating at Humboldt, handles the ores for numbers
of small Yavapai County
mines. There are also operating
mills at Crown King and Mayer. The
Monte Christo mine, a few miles northeast of Wickenburg, is a silver-copper property
of great promise, its
thorough development work showing a splendid body of ore.
The United Verde Extension in 1916 opened up a wonderfully rich body of copper ore, and
stock in the company, which
had gone begging at fifty cents,
rose to $42.00
THE SILVER KING
In Pinal County, which was
organized from parts of
Maricopa, Pima and Yavapai in 1875, 975 mining claims were recorded by 1876.
The county in its early days
was noted for its richness in
silver mines. Nine tons of ore from the Stonewall Jackson yielded $200,000 in silver, and in
1881 the Mack Morris mine in
Richmond Basin produced
$300,000 of the same metal, but the greatest of all of the county's silver
mines, indeed the greatest in
the State, was the wonderful Silver King, on the western side of the Pinal
range, whose
mill was located at Pinal.
It was discovered, in 1872,- by a soldier by the name of Sullivan who had no proper
appreciation of the value of
the black, metallic lumps which flattened when he pounded them with a
hammer. Charles G. Mason, a
rancher for whom Sullivan afterwards
worked, knew the lumps for silver, and later, after Sullivan had left his
employ, made several attempts
to find the lost mine. In 1875 Mason,
with four companions, while returning from the Silver Queen in the Globe
district with a pack train of
ore, was attacked by Apaches and one of their number killed. The body was
buried at a temporary
military post at the summit of Stoneman's
grade called Camp Supply, and when the miners reached the bottom of the
grade, Isaac Copeland, one of
the party, went in search of a mule
and found it standing on some croppings at the side of the trail. He broke off a
piece of the metal; one look
at it was enough. It was the black stuff that Mason had talked about! The
lost mine was found! A
partnership to own the Silver King, as the property was christened, was
formed, with each of the
party, Mason, Copeland, W. H. Long, and B. W. Regan, taking one-fourth
interest. Copeland and Long
soon sold out to their partners for $80,000, and the two who stayed in made
more than that out of the
profits during the next six months. Mason, who then thought it was a good time
to sell, parted with his
holdings to Col. S. M. Barney, of Yuma, for a quarter of a million
dollars, and Ragan also later
sold his interest to Barney for three hundred thousand.
The editor of the Pinal Drill puts a fine denouement on the story. "Several years later when
the Silver King was in full
operation an aged man came
slowly into the settlement of "Picket Post" (Pinal's original name) and gazed with
interest at the busy scene
about him. He went to the office of the Company and announced himself as
Sullivan, the old soldier,
the original discoverer of the mine,
and asked for work. He was identified, and taken into the Company's employ. He had
been working as a farm hand
in California, trying to obtain sufficient means to return to Arizona." The Silver Queen referred to in the Silver
King story was abandoned
after being worked a number of
years because, as the workings went deeper in the ground, the silver ore was so mixed
with copper that, with the
then methods, it could not be worked
with profit.
Now it is the successful Magma mine producing gold, silver and copper, working 275 men
and taking out 225 tons of
ore daily.
Pinal County's placer mines are limited to the "Old Hat" district where $7,106 in gold was
mined from 1903 to 1912.
There is a tradition of a lump of
gold weighing 16 pounds being found in the gravel and that the finder was murdered
for his treasure.
Within the counties of Pima and Santa Cruz, wherein lies the Santa Cruz Valley, which,
as we have seen, was the home of the earliest worked mines in Arizona, are still to be found
properties rich in gold,
silver, copper and lead.
The World's Fair mine, situated two miles west of Harshaw, located in 1879, has produced
since that date over a
million of dollars in the four principal Arizona metals.
The R. R. R. mine in the Palermo district is also a million dollar producer, its total
products equaling that amount
between May, 1911, and October, 1914. It is now closed on account of
litigation. Placer mines in
the Quijotoa district washed out
$30,268 in gold between 1903 and 1912, and in the Greaterville district $30,294
within the same period. It is
estimated that the total Greaterville placer production to date amounts to
$7,000,000. Aside from the
copper mines, which are considered elsewhere, the rich silver mines of the Tombstone district occupy first place in
Cochise County history, both
as to value of output and romantic
interest. In the winter of 1877-1878 a tall, lanky prospector drove his burro
over the Apache-infested
mountains east of the San Pedro. His clothing was worn and patched with
deer and rabbit skins, his
long, scraggy beard was as unkempt as his hair. His name was Ed Schieffelin. One day as he started out from the
Brunckow mines, where he had
been doing assessment work, a
friend shouted to him, "Whar ye goin', Ed?" "Just over the hills to look for stones,"
called back the prospector. "
Wai," commented the friend cheerfully, "the most likely stone for you
to find will be your tombstone." After that, when Schieffelin came upon the
rich silver float, and traced
it to a ledge which looked wonderfully
promising, he said grimly, "This tombstone is sure good enough for me." Schieffelin took a sample of the ore to
the Signal Mill in Mojave
County, where his brother was living.
Much impressed by its richness, as well as by Schieffelin's story, a party was made
up, and returned to the
claim. Although the original location was of but moderate value, later claims
were richer, and soon the
Tombstone boom was on. Following
the usual custom in telling of the discovery of a mine, we now introduce a mule—in fact, several. These particular mules
belonged to Ed Williams, and
one of them, as he wandered off, trailed a tie-chain behind him. The next
morning following the trail,
Williams noticed a metallic gleam
where the chain had worn the surface of the rock, and, behold, the great Contention
mine was discovered! To
settle the "contention" that gave the claim its name, Williams and his
partner took the upper end of
the property, which they called the Grand Central, and Schieffelin and his
friends acquired the
lower—the Contention. Schieffelin soon sold the Contention for $10,000.
Afterwards it produced
millions.
The seven big mining companies operating in the Tombstone district were, the
Contention, Consolidated, the
Tombstone Mining Co., the Grand Central, the Empire, the Stonewall and the
Vizina. At a depth of 500 feet water was struck in the Sulphuret shaft and in such quantities that
the cost to pump it was
practically prohibitive. However, pumps were installed in the Contention and
the Grand Central, but the
underground flow ran from one
mine to another, and as the owners of the other properties refused to join with the
companies which were pumping,
work of necessity was soon
abandoned. The final shutting down of the Contention occurred in 1886 when the
surface works burned.
An attempt was made by E. B. Gage and associates, in 1901, to once more operate the
Tombstone mines. They sunk a
new shaft near the old Contention,
going down 1,080 feet. When water was encountered they installed the most
efficient system of pumps
their engineers could devise, but the result was a failure. At the maximum
they were pumping 8,000,000
gallons of water a day, for which
time the fuel cost alone was $700.
COPPER
While it has been estimated that the
dividends from gold, silver
and lead produced in the early days
of Arizona's history amounted to $100,000,000,it was not until the great copper
properties of the State had
begun to be developed that Arizona really became a world power in the wealth
of its minerals, producing in
one year, 1916, metals to the
value of $203,000,000.
The bulk of the great copper production of the State comes from eleven
companies, which are in order
of dividend amounts paid, The Copper Queen, United Verde, Calumet and Arizona, Arizona Copper, Old Dominion (consolidated
companies), Detroit Copper,
Superior & Pittsburg, Miami
Copper, Shattuck Arizona, Shannon Copper and Ray Consolidated, which have paid
dividends of record to 1916,
amounting to $225,000,000.
THE COPPER QUEEN
To Jack Dunn, a Government scout, belongs the honor of discovering the Copper Queen, one
of the greatest copper
producing mines in the world. In 1877 while on a scouting trip in the Mule
Pass Mountains, where the
city of Bisbee now stands, he
noticed some copper float that looked promising. Returning from his trip, Dunn, at Ft.
Bowie, met George Warren, a
prospector of the average shiftless,
optimistic type, told him about his find, and grubstaked him on the usual basis that
the man who furnished the
provisions should own half the
property found. John Cady, an Arizona pioneer, says that Warren was also grubstaked about
this time by George Stephens
at Eureka Springs. In any
event, on December 27, 1877, Warren, with four others (neither Dunn's nor Stephen's
names appearing) located the
Mercey claim, which was afterwards
called the Copper Queen.
During the next few months a number of other claims were located, in several of which
Warren had an interest, but
his finds did him little good; he soon sold out whatever interest he
had in the various properties
and squandered the money. It is
said that he lost one claim in a drunken wager over a horse race. Warren drank himself
into poverty—almost to
dementia—and after living a number
of years on a pension from the Copper Queen Company, died at Bisbee.
The modern development of the great Copper Queen mine may be said to have had its
genesis in 1880 with the
arrival of Dr. James Douglas who had just come from the inspection of the
United Verde. At that time
Edward Riley, who had taken a
bond on the mine, had disposed of it to a San Francisco firm of engineers, Martin and
Ballard, who erected a small
furnace and smeltered some ore.
Upon recommendation of Doctor Douglas, the Phelps-Dodge Company purchased property
adjoining the
Martin-Ballard-Riley claim at a cost of $40,000. It is said that both mines,
seemingly, had about
exhausted their paying ore, when a foreman, J. W. Howell, on his own initiative and against
orders, started a drift which
finally broke into a remarkably rich body of ore. Afterwards the Copper Queen acquired the Holbrook, Neptune and other properties
which ultimately became their
most profitable holdings. Copper
Queen ores average about six per cent copper. The present operating company
(1918) employs 3,000 men and
handles 2,500 tons of ore daily.
Its great smelters, models of their kind, are located at Douglas.
CALUMET AND ARIZONA
The Calumet and Arizona mines, which rank third in the state as dividend payers, are
also in the Warren district.
The original owner of the Irish
Mag, which became the nucleus of the properties of the company, was a queer, misanthropic character named James Daley, who lived in Mule Gulch, in the outskirts of Bisbee. In
resisting arrest, Daley shot
an officer and fled into Mexico.
Afterwards a saloon keeper by the name of Andy Mehan produced a bill of sale of
the mine to himself which
bill of sale was attached by Cohan
Brothers, merchants living in Tombstone. A second claimant for Daley's mine was
Martin Costello, who acquired
the title by buying the claim
of a Mexican woman who said she was Daley's legal widow. A second wife and
third claimant appeared on
the scene from Leadville. The
outcome of the litigation, which lasted for ten years, was that Costello got the mine,
which he sold to the "C.
& A." for over a half million of dollars. The mine is a deep one. At the 850-foot
level small bunches of ore
were found, and at the 1,050, a
splendid body of copper-bearing rock was encountered out of which over $10,000,000 was paid in dividends.
A small smelter was built near Douglas, which was put in operation in November, 1902.
Following a policy of
expansion, development companies were formed, these being known as the
Junction Development Company,
the Pittsburg and Duluth Development
Company, the Calumet and Pittsburg
Development Company, and the Lake Superior and Pittsburg Company, and in 1910 all were brought into the Calumet and Arizona
Mining Company, giving the
latter organization more than
2,000 acres of mineral land. One of the latest acquisitions of the Company, as noted
elsewhere, is the New
Cornelia property at Ajo.
THE SHATTUCK ARIZONA
The Shattuck Arizona is a neighbor of the Copper Queen and the Calumet and Arizona, and though its output is given as only about
500 tons daily, it is ninth
on the list of dividend producers. It is often called the "Biggest Little
Mine," for while its surface
area is small, it is big in every other way.
Its cost of production for 1912 was given as 7.22 cents on 13,000,000 pounds of copper. It is interesting to note that the
Shattuck contains a larger
variety of minerals and produces commercially more different minerals than
any other mine in the State.
Some of its ores have high values
in gold and silver.
A drift on the 300-foot level encountered a cave, wonderful in its beauty, with a
stalactite-studded dome
eighty feet high, about which hang coral- like deposits in many beautiful colors.
THE UNITED VERDE
The United Verde, Senator W. A. Clark's great mine at Jerome, is perhaps the best known
copper mine in the State. The
earliest location in the Black
Hills section, where the mine is situated, is supposed to have been made, in 1877, by
General Crook's famous scout,
Al. W. Sieber, and called the
Verde from the river, not far away. In 1877 the Verde mining district was
organized. Among the owners
of locations in the district a little
later were Angus and John McKinnon, who were working the Wade Hampton. In 1882
they sold their claim to F.
F. Thomas, who believing that
a big mine lay within the steep hillsides, bonded the adjoining Eureka, the Hermit,
the Azure and the Adventure
Chromes, and took in George
A. Treadwell, the mining expert, as a partner. The United Verde Copper Company was
organized in 1883 with Thomas
as superintendent and general
manager. A fifty ton smelter was built.
While the smelting of the ores proved the mine to be wonderfully rich, not only in copper
but in silver as well,
reduction processes were primitive and transportation to the Atlantic and
Pacific Railroad at Ash Fork
was so expensive that in 1884, when
copper was worth about seven cents a pound, the mine was shut down.
Governor F. A. Tritle secured a bond and lease on the property in 1887, but conditions
did not improve enough to put
the mine on a paying basis. Still,
much rich ore was taken out and Governor Tritle was a lavish host to the many
visitors who came to Jerome
to inspect the mine.
At the request of Governor Tritle, Prof. James Douglas, who afterwards was prominent in
the development of the Bisbee
mines, examined the United
Verde properties, but finally reported that he thought the mine too far away from a
railroad to be worked
profitably.
Soon after, Senator Clark visited the camp, bringing with him his mining experts, J.
L. Giroux and John L.
Thompson. As a result of their investigations Clark purchased the mine, and under
scientific development,
turned it into one of the greatest
paying properties in America. He built a narrow-gauge railroad from the Sante Fe
Prescott and Phoenix to the
mine in 1894, and in 1915 abandoned the smelter which was located at Jerome, and now reduces all of the Company's ores
at Clarkdale on the Verde,
where at an expense of $3,000,000
there has been constructed a plant that is one of the most perfect of its kind in
the world.
THE OLD DOMINION
The first locations of record in the Globe district were the Globe and the Globe Ledge claims,
which were made in 1873 by a
group of prospectors from
Florence. Their locations were made on a large iron and copper stained out-crop,
which is now a part of the
Old Dominion mine. The copper claims
received but little attention for the first few years as, encouraged by such findings
as the Silver King,
prospectors were looking for rich gold and silver ores.
The first mining camp to be established in the district was called Ramboz, after its
founder, a miner by the name
of Henry Ramboz. On account
of better location and water supply, in about 1876, a camp was located on Pinal
Creek, near the Globe claims,
which name was given to the
settlement.
Numerous mines in the vicinity that became famous for their rich silver ore include
the McMilen, the Mack Morris
(sometimes spelled MacMorris),
the Stonewall Jackson and others. Records of production are non-existent, yet the
mines around the McMillen are
estimated to have produced about
$750,000, of which $600,000 came from the Stonewall Jackson. The Mack Morris,
which was located in the
Richmond Basin, is credited with
producing $650,000.
Gradually, however, the claims of copper began to attract attention and, in 1881, the Old
Dominion was mining carbonate
and silicate copper ore on the
Chicago and New York claims near Bloody Tanks, about a mile and one-half from the
present town of Miami, and
erected a thirty-ton furnace. The
deposit was soon exhausted and the furnace was moved to the Globe, where the Globe
Ledge and other claims were
grouped under the name of the
Old Dominion mines.
In 1886, the high cost of operation and the low price of copper proved too great a
handicap for the operators to
overcome, and by the end of the year the mines closed down. The Old
Dominion up to that time is
reported to have produced 23,- 000,000
pounds of copper besides some gold and silver. The company was reorganized in
1888 and again in 1895, when
there was formed the Old Dominion Copper Mining and Smelting Company, which is operating the property at the
present day. The Old Dominion
is fifth in the list of the State's
largest dividend producers. It has 1,400 men on its payroll and about 500 tons of
ore are taken out daily.
MIAMI COPPER
The Miami Copper Company's mines, eighth in the State's list of dividend producers,
are situated at Miami, a
short distance west and north of Globe, where low, red, iron-stained hills in the
early '90s induced "Black
Jack" Newman,. Jim Falls, J. P. Gates and others to make location on the
ground now owned by the Miami
Copper Company. For a number
of years but little consistent development work was done. In 1906 the owners of many claims grouped their locations and
Fred Alsdorf and F. J. Elliott
took an option on them, and soon
afterwards had the location examined by J. Park Channing, consulting engineer of the
General Development Company,
a Lewisohn corporation, who
was negotiating for the Inspiration claims. As a result, the General Development
Company took over the
Alsdorf-Elliott option and, in 1906, started development work. Three per cent
ore was found for a total
vertical depth of 490 feet, and by November, 1907, there were about a
million tons of ore in sight.
The Miami Copper Company was organized with a capital of $3,000,000 which was
later increased to
$4,000,000. The company's president is Adolph Lewisohn. About one
thousand men are employed.
ARIZONA COPPER
The mines of the Arizona Copper Company, Ltd., are situated in the Clifton-Morenci
district with the mill at
Morenci and smelter in the outskirts of Clifton.
Among the earliest copper properties to be worked in the State were some in this
district, although it lay
right in the heart of the Apache country, and every prospecting party entering it
did so at infinite risk.
Henry Clifton, whose name is now borne by the mining town, was the first prospector to
enter the district and notice
the promise of its copper indications. At that time, however, the Apaches were so hostile that the discoveries were not
followed up. In 1870, a party
of 46 miners came over the mountains
from Pinos Altos, New Mexico, found a little gold and two years later located
the Arizona, Central, Yankie
and Moctezuma. The same year
the famous Longfellow, which developed into the first notably rich copper producer in
the State,
was located by Robert Metcalfe.
By 1873 mining was actively prosecuted in the district, and the Leszynskys were
operating an adobe smelter in
the district below the Longfellow, and, although of crudest construction and
using charcoal for fuel, it
managed to work something like
a ton of ore a day.
To solve the problem of getting the ore from the Longfellow to the
smelter at Clifton, the first railroad
in the Territory was built. The track was twenty-inch gauge, and was operated by
mule power until, in 1880, a
four-ton locomotive, the Little
Emma, was hauled into the district by freight wagons, put together and set down
upon the toy track. Its duty
was to haul the empty ore cars to
the mine. On the return trip when the ore cars were full, gravity supplied the necessary
motor power.
At first the Apaches viewed the little train with something like awe, but later, with the
contempt that familiarity is
said to breed, tried to hold it up by a frontal attack as well as one from
the flank. Dad Arbuckle, the
engineer, pulled the throttle
to the last notch, and the Little Emma gallantly leaped to battle. The engagement was brief
and eminently satisfactory to
Dad. After the Apaches that
had been left intact had cleaned up the muss occasioned by those of their
tribe that Little Emma had
butted, they decided to eliminate
frontal attacks from their book of
strategy.
The Leszynskys sold out in 1883 to a Scotch corporation, The Arizona Copper Company,
Ltd., for $2,000,000. The new
owners built a narrow gauge
railroad from their mine at Clifton to Lordsburg on the Southern Pacific, and, in
1892, erected a leaching
plant to handle certain types of
the ore, which like all of the ore in the district
averages only about three per cent
copper. In order to operate
with a profit, most efficient methods
are used both in handling and treating the ore. A daily output from the mine of
3,000 tons requires a working
force of but 1,600 men. Reverberatory
furnaces are used in the company's present smelter, which was erected in
1914, at a cost of several
million.
DETROIT COPPER
The Detroit Copper Company's mines, sixth in order in dividend production, are also
located at Morenci. The
company was incorporated in 1875, and in 1882 constructed a small smelter
six miles from Morenci, on
the San Francisco River. Two years
later the smelter was moved to the mines. By 1893 the discovery had been made of the
immense
amount of low-grade ore within Copper
Mountain, and the Phelps-Dodge
organization, after making
careful examination, became satisfied with the financial possibilities of mining
operations in the district
and, in 1895, bought up a controlling interest of the Detroit Copper Company stock. Fifteen hundred tons of ore is the
mine's daily output, and
thirteen hundred is the number of
men on the company's payroll.
THE SHANNON
The Shannon mines, of the Shannon Copper Company, at Metcalf, are in the
Clifton-Morenci neighborhood,
and although they produce but 150 tons of ore daily, with seventy-five men,
rank tenth in the list of the
State's great dividend producers.
The company was organized in 1900, with a capitalization of $3,000,000. It has since
produced in the neighborhood of 140,000,000 pounds of copper, of a value of more than $15,000,000, and
has in sight as much more
copper as has been taken out.
Its property consists of about twenty claims located near the summit of Shannon
Mountain, rising 1,200 feet
about the bed of Chase Creek. These
claims were grouped around the original Shannon claim which was one of the
earliest claims in the
district.
At the Shannon mines is the Shannon incline, down which ore cars drop a distance of
eight hundred feet in a
horizontal distance of one thousand feet. Occasionally, a rash passenger goes
down in the cars, when the
sensation is much the same as if
he took a tail dive in an aeroplane. The company has a model smelter below
Clifton to which it carries
its ores over its own railroad line.
RAY CONSOLIDATED
While the Ray Consolidated is
eleventh on the State's list
of dividend producers, the daily output of ore from its mines is greater than any
of its rivals, amounting to
9,000 tons a day. The
property is located on Mineral Creek in Pinal County, so named by Lieut. W. Emory who was with General Kearny's dragoons on
their passage to California
in 1846.
Although Emory's report gave
enthusiastic predictions concerning
the noticeable copper croppings
at the mouth of the stream, no locations were made in the district until about
1874. Three years later the Mineral Creek Mining district had been formed and was favorably known, not
for copper however, but as
the location of several promising
silver claims.
In 1883, a thirty-ton furnace was
treating ore from the Ray,
Scorpion and Bilk mines. Soon after
that the Ray Copper Company, which was organized in 1882, erected a small concentrating
mill and remodeled its
furnace.
The company, in 1898, sold its holdings to a syndicate of Englishmen whose principal
was James Gordon. The Ray
Copper Company, Ltd., was
organized by them and a mill was built at what is now Kelvin, where Mineral Creek
empties into the Gila, and a
railroad was constructed from there
to the mine.
It would seem that the investment did not prove a profitable one and the property passed
into the hands of the
Guggenheimer organization in 1908. Under the efficient administration of D.
C. Jackling, the present
vice-president and manager, the ore is now being handled in the most
approved scientific manner,
and the property is on a sound financial
basis.
The Ray Mill was erected at Hayden in 1910, and in 1912 the company built, on
adjoining ground, one of the
greatest smelters in the State, equipped with reverberatory furnaces. With its immense deposit of low grade ore,
estimated the third largest
in the United States, its future
may be said to be more like that of a manufacturing problem than the usual mine. It is simply
a question of manufacturing the ore now blocked out into copper. The company is
working about 2,100 men.
INSPIRATION
Though not among the present "Big Eleven" dividend producers, The Inspiration
Consolidated Copper Company
mine is among the notable properties of the State. In the first place it has
the privilege of paying taxes
on the greatest assessed value
(over $74,000,000) of any of Arizona's mines; and secondly, what probably pleases its
stockholders more, it is said
that in capacity of mill and mine
operation, it leads the State.
To put it on its present standing of efficiency $15,000,000 was spent in development work
and in creating the various
plants required for its successful operation.
The ore varies in width in Inspiration ground from 200 to 1,600 feet, with an average
vertical dimension
approximating 150 feet.
The daily average amount of ore ground at the Marcey Mill is 475 tons, and the company
employs about 625 men.
AJO MINES
It is interesting to note that the old Ajo mines, the first copper properties to be worked
within the State, and for a
generation practically lying idle, have been reborn by modern scientific
methods, and now, held by a
subsidiary company under the Calumet
and Arizona, are considered among the big coming properties in the State.
The presence of a large body of low grade copper ore has, for many years, been known to
exist at Ajo, but it was
thought that the grade was so low,
less than two per cent, that it would not pay to work it.
However, under Maj. John C. Greenway, the manager of the Calumet and Arizona Mining
Company, in 1915, a long
series of experiments were carried
on until a process had been satisfactorily developed, complete in every detail. The process was finally decided upon
January 10,1916, the ground
broken February 1,1917, and a 5,000-ton
plant for handling the ore completed May, 1917.
To the New Cornelia, the original purchase of the Calumet and Arizona, in August of 1917
was added the ground of the
Ajo Consolidated Copper Company—1,150
acres. With the ore now
developed in the New Cornelia and
these new lands there are about 65,000,- 000 tons of ore in sight. Announcement that the New Cornelia will
erect a 5,000-ton flotation
plant and a 2,000-ton smelter at
Ajo is said to have been made by the C. & A. management.
While the principal metals found in Arizona are copper, silver, gold, lead and zinc,
most of the other rarer
metals also are found. The ores of molybdenum, namely molybdenite and
wulfenite, are found in many
places in Arizona. Molybdenite is
found in Gila County in disseminated ores at Miami; in Greenlee County in the copper
ores of the Clifton-Morenci district; in Pinal County in ores at Ray and Kelvin as original
mineral. It is also found in
Pima and Santa Cruz counties. Wulfenite
is nearly always present in silver ores at Tombstone; it is also found in Cochise,
Gila and Pima, Pinal, Yavapai
and Yuma counties. Molybdenite,
used extensively in the manufacture of exceedingly hard steels, is peculiarly
adapted for armor plate. When
a regular supply can be guaranteed
to steel manufacturers, there is no doubt of a steady market for Arizona's
ample supply of molybdenite.
Vanadium is well scattered throughout the State, principally as the ore, vanadinite.
It is found in Cochise
County, near Fairbanks; in Gila County in the Globe district; in Pima County 14
miles northwest of Tucson,
and in several places in Pinal and
Yavapai counties. Tungsten is also found in many parts of Arizona, including Pima,
Santa Cruz, Cochise,
Maricopa, Mojave and Yavapai counties.
Manganese is also found in many places in the State. Mercury is found in
Maricopa, Yavapai and Gila
counties.
Building materials of a varied character are found within the State, including cement
rock, lime, gypsum, marble
and slate. Arizona promises
future development in asbestos, mica, celestite and strongionite which are
used for fireworks, barites,
clays and other products.
According to the Directory of Operating Mines, compiled by Charles F. Willis, director of
the Bureau of Mines, University of Arizona, 1915-16, there were then being actively worked within the
state, mines as follows:
Copper, 65; gold, 25; gold and silver,
8; silver, 3; lead with gold and silver, 4; lead with silver, 2; lead with zinc, 5;
zinc, 1; tungsten, 3;
cinnabar, 1. In addition to this it must be remembered that most of the mines listed
as copper also carry gold and
silver, and that many new mines
have been put in operation since the directory was compiled.
Zinc is now fifth or sixth on the list of metals produced in the State, but is quite likely
to become second only to
copper in importance owing to the exceedingly large deposits of zinc
carbonates which have
recently been discovered. In
general it may be said that Arizona miners receive in wages every year over
$50,000,000. The eleven big
copper companies paid in dividends in 1916 (estimated) $35,000,000.
The total production of gold, silver and copper in Arizona for 1916-1917 is as follows:
1916, gold, $4,092,800;
silver, 6,680,252 fine ounces; copper, 692,630,286 pounds. In 1917, gold,
$5,533,800; silver, 8,183,205
ounces; copper, 692,923,722 pounds. In money the total valuation of all
mineral production in Arizona
in 1916 was about $205,000,000, and in 1917, in spite of labor
difficulties and the fixation
of the price of some minerals, it rose to about $225,000,000. The assessed valuation
on Arizona mines, mills and
smelters for 1918 aggregated over
$421,000,000.
In speaking of the probable
prospects for the year 1918, G. M. Butler, acting director of the
Arizona State Bureau of
Mines, says: "
It is rather early in the year to attempt to prophesy anything as to the production for
1918. So many unforeseen
factors enter into the matter
that at best it can be nothing but a
rough guess. The Government's
refusal to raise the price of copper has done much to discourage small
producers, many of whom were
working at a loss in hope that the
Government would do something to alleviate their difficulties. Doubtless a
considerable number of these
will be forced to stop work. The low price of copper also prevents the
larger mining companies from
doing much needed development work,
and that is bound to have an unfortunate effect upon their production, which will
become more and more evident
as time goes on. The market for
tungsten, molybdenum, and other relatively rare metals used in ferro-alloys is in a
very unstable condition at
present, and offers little incentive to producers of these metals. Whether any change may be expected in the near future
it is now impossible to say. "
On the other hand labor troubles considerably curtailed the possible production of
Arizona mines last year, and,
if this year can be passed through without a repetition of these
difficulties, this factor may
counterbalance the detrimental ones already cited. Taking everything into
consideration, I believe that
our production this year will be about equal to that of last year unless
difficulties now unforeseen
arise; and there seems little doubt that Arizona will retain her place
as the first mineral state in
the Union."
COAL
Although no coal has ever been mined commercially in Arizona it has been known for a number of years that two fields exist within the boundaries of the state. The Deer Creek
fields lie on the south side
of the Gila River just east of Dudleyville
and about eighty-five miles northeast of Tucson. The field extends ten or twelve
miles in an east and west
direction and has a known breadth
of three to four miles.
In a report published by the State Bureau of Mines it is stated that "The beds are
thin, varying in thickness
from twenty-four to thirty inches within the workable limits of the seam.
Tonnage based on thirty
square miles and twenty-four inches
with fifty per cent available is 30,050,000 tons. The coal is fairly well disposed for
mining except in regions of
local disturbance." Part of the
deposit is hard, black coal, adaptable to transportation, commercial use and coke, the second quality is only valuable for gas
manufacture. The Black Mesa
coal field is largely within the Hopi Indian Reservation, lying west of the
Chinlee Valley and north of
the Hopi village of Walpai. The
deposit is of considerable tonnage and of quality equal to Gallup, New Mexico, coal.
The best exposure of the bed
at present is fourteen miles
southeast of Tuba where coal is taken to supply the Indian school. A
seven-foot stratum of coal is
here found ten feet below the surface. Coal is also found near Pinedale in Navajo
County.
THE DIAMOND HOAX
Perhaps the greatest mining hoax that ever was perpetrated in Arizona was the alleged
discovery in 1872 of a
diamond field in the northeastern part of the Territory. Two men by the
names of Arnold and Slack
were supposed to be the discoverers, and magnificent-looking rough diamonds and rough rubies, which it is said they
had picked up in the Arizona
field, were exhibited in San Francisco.
A company with a capital of ten million dollars was organized in San Francisco and
the list of stockholders
included a number of large mining
investors. The fraud was exposed by Clarence King, United States Geologist, who showed that the stones exhibited were from Africa
and Brazil, and upon visiting
the Arizona fields, saw at once
that it was not diamond-bearing country. A second fake diamond field was located
near the mouth of the Gila.
ARIZONA'S LOST MINES
Ever since the Americans first came to Arizona there have been current stories of "Lost
Mines."
The earliest of these stories were usually of mines belonging to the Jesuit padres and were
supposed to be worked by
Indians whom the friars enslaved, the poor natives toiling long hours
in the bowels of the earth,
and when not working, fastened by chains to the walls of rocky caverns to
keep them from running away.
These mines, of course, were fabulously
rich, chunks of gold as big as one's fist and masses of silver weighing thousands of
pounds being as common as
cobblestones in a river bottom, and all, according to these stories, were
covered up at the time of the
uprising of the Pima Indians in 1751 and their locations lost with the
expulsion of the Jesuits by
the Spanish rulers in 1767. This
is pure fiction as there is no evidence whatever to support the persistent tradition that
the Jesuits owned mines in
Arizona. As we have seen elsewhere,
mining was carried on to a limited extent during the years they did
missionary work in Arizona as
we learn from extracts from Padre Kino's report, "Even in sight of these new
missions some good mining
camps of very rich silver ore are
being established." However, the Jesuits were striving to save the souls of Indians, not
to profit in a material way
by their labor.
After the Jesuit stories of lost mines grew stale, more modern ones took their places in
after supper talks of
prospectors as they sat about their fires under the Arizona stars, with
distant yelping of coyotes
for orchestral accompaniment. One of the most interesting of these stories, and
one that undoubtedly had a
foundation of fact, was that concerning
the "Lost Soldier Mine."
In 1869, Abner McKeever and his wife were killed by Apaches near the big bend in the
Gila River and his daughter Belle was taken prisoner. As soon as word reached the nearest
military post, several small
parties of mounted soldiers were started on the trail. One of these
detachments was composed of
Sergeant Crossthwaite, Privates Joe Wormley and Eugene Flannigan, who
journeyed across the hot,
forbidding desert to the north of the river.
Becoming confused in their bearings, the three wandered among the cacti and creosote
bushes until two of the
horses fell exhausted. With death from thirst staring them in the face, the
soldiers, taking some of the
horse flesh with them, pushed ahead
hoping soon to find water.
That same night, in following up an arroyo in some low, broken mountains they came upon
a spring just in time to save
their lives. After they had
assuaged their burning thirst they fell into an exhausted sleep. When they awoke in the
morning, so the story goes,
they found nuggets of pure gold in the bottom of the spring, and all about
were scattered lumps of
gold-bearing quartz, besides two
quartz veins on the canyon wall above the spring, which were so impregnated with
gold the men dug grains of
the yellow metal out with their knives.
They loaded fifty pounds of the quartz on their remaining horse and started back for the
Gila River. En route,
overcome by thirst and heat, Crossthwaite
and the horse died and Flannigan, a little later, wholly spent, crawled under
a stunted mesquite to die.
Wormley, the hardiest of the three, finally reached the river delirious
and all but dead. Later, a rescuing party reached Flannigan
in time to save his life,
then found the horse and brought
in the quartz from which $1800 in gold was obtained.
Wormley and Flannigan made many attempts to retrace their steps but without
success. They never found the
lost mine, and though for years afterwards prospectors scoured the
country, the desert still
holds its mystery.
The "Lost Dutchman Mine" derived its name from a German who, from time to time, used
to visit Wickenburg to buy
supplies. Always he had his
burros laden with quartz so rich in gold that it drove the inhabitants of the town half mad
with covetousness and wholly
mad with exasperation when
they were unable to get even the remotest hint from the taciturn prospector as to
where his mine lay.
Many attempts were made to both follow and track him, but slipping away at night with
the feet of his burros tied
in gunny sacks, he always succeeded in eluding his pursuers. One time he
failed to come back and the
desert hid another story in its
grim bosom.
In the '60s, an Indian brought to Arizona City a lump of gold as big as the palm of his
hand and traded it for beads
and booze, boasting largely that he knew where he could get plenty more
when that was gone.
Bribes, coaxing nor threats could not induce him to tell the location
of his Golconda; he said that
nobody must know but himself. When he disappeared one day, "The Lone Indian
Mine" was added to the
mysteries and legends of the desert sands.
Then there is the story that tells of one of the old, nomadic, War Department camels
leading a man to a desert
"tank" or declivity in a rock which collected water in the rainy season. Here,
so the story ran, there was
even more gold scattered about than
at the Lost Soldier Mine.
Another story, located in Yavapai County, tells of a ledge known to the Yavapai Indians
where they used to dig the
yellow metal out of the rocks and
make rifle bullets from it. This likely was inspired by Felix Aubrey's story of the
Indian who shot a rabbit with
a gold bullet.
