Mining camp

“ A gang of miners worked like beavers in the bed of the stream. With fires they thawed the ground, after having diverted the creek waters the previous summer.
Their camp was a large one. Fifty men worked in two shifts, one half in the daytime, the others at night. At the beginning of each month they were changed, and night men were placed on the day force; this alternation being found best in all mining camps. ”

“ The very atmosphere seemed to impress even the most casual observer that something more than the usual dull routine of a mining camp life was about to transpire.
Four long weary months had dragged themselves by since the snow came down upon Rabbit Creek Canon, and put an end to all out-door operations of the miners. For four months the little town had been cut off from all communication with its neighbors. The earth was buried deep beneath the white shroud which had so silently fallen upon it. ”

“ THE MINING CAMP UNIVERSITY We continue our journey on the Union Pacific Railroad, and come to the metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, a city entirely surrounded by gold mines, silver mines, coal mines and copper mines, and entirely controlled by hard-fighting piratical gentlemen who have seized these hidden treasures. Denver is only a generation removed from the mining camp stage of civilization, and mining camp manners and morals still prevail in its financial, political and educational life. ”

“ It has been said that for every bona fide miner there was at least one hanger-on or camp follower, who had no intention of doing any digging or washing, but who was smart enough to realize that a veritable thief's paradise would be built up by the hard workers. Sometimes these men went to the trouble of digging tunnels under the ground and into the tents of successful miners, frequently passing through rich deposits of gold on the way. At other times they waylaid wagons and coaches coming into San Francisco from the mining camps. ”

“ Miners with heavy packs on their backs were starting out for the claims on the creeks and into the unknown interior, but the "bar-room" miner was far more in evidence.
It was not the typical mining camp where the population for the greater part is composed of hardy, honest people who have undergone privation to reach their destination, and thereby represent, in a measure, the survival of the fittest ”

“ Nitschkan, as usual. Where—? Excuse me," a dark flush rose on his parchment skin at this breach of mining-camp etiquette which he had almost committed.
For a few moments they talked exclusively of the mining interests of the locality. It is this feverish, inexhaustible topic that is almost exclusively dwelt upon in mining camps, all other topics seeming tame and commonplace beside this fascinating subject, presided over by the golden fairy of fortune and involving her. ”

“ We presume that Mr Hopkins would represent a gang of miners working a placer with giant powder and washing out smelting ore in a tin dipper. Its pretty hard, though, for an artist who never saw a mining camp, to sit and watch a New York beer tournament and draw pictures of life in a mining camp, and people ought not to expect too much.
RIDING DOWN A MOUNTAIN. GUNNISON CITY is one of the peculiarities of a mining boom. It spreads out and slops over the plain like a huge camp meeting, but without shape or beauty. ”

“ The California mining camp was ephemeral. Often it was founded, built up, flourished, decayed, and had weeds and herbage growing over its site and hiding all of man’s work inside of ten years. Yet to one witnessing these changes it seemed the life of a whole generation. Of such settlements, Red Mountain Bar was one. Red Mountain lay three miles above Swett’s Bar, “up river.” ”

“ The mining camp at the mouth of the great canyon had been worked out, so far as the placer mines went, and these few broken men who remained, as a rule, were turning their attention to other things. Here one had planted a little garden on the hillside, on a spot that had once been a graveyard. There, an old lawyer had grown grape-vines all over and about the door and chimney of his cabin, till men said it looked like a spider-web. ”

“ It was scarcely more than fifteen miles to the claims which had been the site, some years before, of a thriving mining camp, but was now a deserted town of tumble-down shanties, corrugated iron shacks, and the rustled skeletons of machinery at the mouths of certain shafts. Money had been spent freely by individuals and corporations in seeking to develop the various "leads" believed by the first prospectors to be hidden under the surface of the earth at Tintacker. ”

“ At Cold Springs, a few miles below Hangtown, was located a mining camp, at this time consisting of a cluster of tents used for saloons and for gambling houses, and one provision store, owned by Burgess & Hill. ”

“ After a few days at Bridge Creek we joined a pack train going to Canyon City from The Dalles, and though the road was infested with savages, who mercilessly slaughtered small parties, we arrived at the then flourishing mining camp without mishap or adventure. Canyon City at that time was a typical mining camp. There were congregated every known character, race, profession and creed. Under a rough exterior the lawyer, doctor, minister, the rude western frontiersman and the staid and sober farmer, worked side by side. ”

“ The early mining camps had hardly more stability than a shadow on the ground. At the faintest echo of "Gold!" men came as if the wind had carried the word, often leaving their own rich diggings for those that echo said were richer. At times as many as five thousand miners stampeded almost overnight from one section to another. ”

“ A mining camp is a cesspool in which the unfortunate ones wish for death and a mecca for a certain type of speculators, the latter almost as numerous as the former. A poor man has a better chance on Broadway! ”

“ Here we learned that some men were mining a few miles up the river, so we drove on until we found a little work being done in a dry gulch near the river bank. We made our camp at this spot and had plenty of wood, water and grass. We found there was something to be learned in the art of gold mining. We had no tools nor money, and had never seen a speck of native gold and did not know how to separate it from the dirt nor where to search for it. We were poor, ignorant emigrants. There were two or three men camped here. ”

“ But why should he try to move on? Word comes back to the miner from other buddies who have tried other camps. “They’re all the same. Might as well stay where you are.” 282
Behind every shack is a dump heap of cans, coal ashes, potato peel, coffee grounds, and old shoes.
Rarely was the voice of the miner’s wife raised in song as she plodded through her daily drudgery. Now and then the young folks could be heard singing—but not an ancient ballad. Rather it was a rakish song picked up from drummers coming through the mining camps who sold their inferior wares to the commissary manager. ”

“ Everywhere on these hills the mining prospector has roamed, and on the summit of the pass we found a group of cabins where certain claims have been "staked out" and much digging done. As yet, they are as profitable, by reason of remoteness, as may be the mines in the lunar mountains. With careless glances at piles of ore which may or may not be valuable, we rode on to camp, two miles beyond—not very comfortably, finding water scarce, some rain falling and a great wealth of midges, such as we call in upper Pennsylvania "pungies," and needing a smudge for the routing of them. ”

“ Old time mining camps where once the busy, bearded, red-shirted miners shoveled pay dirt into their rockers, long toms or sluice boxes, are now but windrows of water-washed stones along the creek bed, where cabins once stood. ”

“ The supply will not suffice for more than the number of people already at the mining camp; so, if 20,000 or 30,000 should rush in, carrying only a small supply of food, the stores will be compelled to limit sales to each purchaser, and those not able to find work will starve. ”

“ From the nature of things, metal mines do not, like our cities and settlements, lie in those regions covered deep in rich soils. Our mines must be found in the mountains and deserts where rocks are exposed to search. Thus they lie away from the centers of comfort and culture,—they are the outposts of civilization. The engineer is an officer on outpost duty, and in these places he is the camp leader. By his position as a leader in the community he has a chieftainship that carries a responsibility besides mere mine management. ”

“ Well, that’s the way this mine was found. A prospector that was camping here went up on that little hill to 47rock his old burro back to camp and right on top he found a piece of silver that was so pure you could cut it with your knife. That guy was honest, he gave the credit to his burro, and, if the truth was known, half the mines in the west would be named after some knot-headed jackass. That’s how much intellect it takes to be a prospector.”
“No, I’ll tell you what’s the matter with these prospectors,” returned Denver with a miner’s scorn, “they do everything in the world but dig. ”

“ The camp not only hummed with activity but it pulsated with the steady pounding of the stamps. Every independent operator and lesser companies went to work with fresh enthusiasm from the 101 mill at the foot of the Big Hill to the Atlantic, from the Mountain Key to the Mammoth, from the Gopher to the old Skillicorn mill. If a necessary shutdown occurred at night the silence awakened all sleepers in the neighborhood.
Mr. George Hearst, who had cattle interests in the Southwest, heard of the mines and sent a young mining engineer, Benjamin B. Thayer, to investigate. ”

“ The real character came to view in that rough-and-tumble life; all worked hard; all had equal rights; weaklings died and rascals were hanged, so for a short time the mining camps were the most honest, robust and hardworking communities any where in the world. But the saloonkeepers, the loafers, called bummers, the blackleg gamblers that crept in, were, many of them, from the very first of the vulturous type that, as much as they dared, aroused the worst passions of the miners at their weakest moments and gratified them with low women and carousal. ”

“ The brutalities of mining-camps which we read of were probably reflections of the inhospitality of the land. The very characteristics which make the desert dramatic and beautiful make it terrible for mankind to overcome. The expense of mining operations in that hard country proved to be too great unless the vein were exceptionally rich, and most of the small mines are now [Pg 55] abandoned. Nevertheless you still occasionally meet a prospector with his burros, and in remote places like Silver Lake the Ford has not entirely done away with the pack-train. ”

“ Madame Chief Guardian, associate guardians, and Camp Fire Girls of Hiawatha Institute, I bring to you a message of things planned by Flamingo Camp Fire Girls, thirteen in number. As you know, there is in an adjoining state a strike of coal miners that has caused much suffering among the poor families of the strikers. High Peak lives in a mountain mining district. Her father is a mine owner and has given his consent to the extending of an invitation to Flamingo Camp Fire to work among these poor families and give them relief during the Christmas holidays. ”

“ As the Caribou, British Columbia, mines had shown that in placer fields the individual, once a camp was established, could do little except labor for some one else or in lieu of this prospect for new fields, some form of organized or cooperative effort being essential to the development of mining, even in its simpler stages; so now the War-Eagle quartz-mines of Idaho, remote and newly born, called for outside capital and for science. ”

“ Thorough experts in mining are found in every walk in life. Information in detail would fill a space ten times as large as can be given here. The two largest mining camps, 39 Leadville and Cripple Creek, are both easy of access by rail from Denver, and, while as towns they possess features that are unique, there is little in them outside the lines of average American citizenship and human nature, except the vast interests to which they are exclusively devoted. ”

“ In the more rugged places mining camps may be met with when everything else fails.
At present these mountain valleys are the more thickly inhabited portions of the country, both because of the mines and because farming pursuits are more cheaply and conveniently followed owing to the greater abundance of small and easily controlled streams of water, which render irrigation possible even by the poorest settler. Only in the southern portions of Gallatin and Park Counties are the mountains so forbidding as to be uninhabited, and then in limited areas only. ”

“ The discovery made the camp. It was made on October 23, 1896, and as soon as the news spread everybody rushed to the diggings from Circle City, Forty-Mile, and from every other camp in the district.
"Some of the saloons here take in $300 per day in dust and nuggets. Beer is fifty cents per drink. I have quit drinking. Logs are worth $30 per 1,000, and lumber $150 per 1,000. Most people live in tents, but cabins are being put up rapidly.
"We have the most orderly mining community in the world. There is no thief, no claim jumping, no cheating or swindling in the many gambling houses. ”

“ Work on claims ceased and universally or almost universally in winter, but might stop at other times, such as seasons of drouth, when want of water handicapped operations. The arrangement gave the miners an opportunity to visit home or to pass the winter at such towns as Boise, Lewiston or Portland. Men seldom thought of making homes for themselves at the Mining camps. But a considerable number would usually remain there through cold weather, and in deep diggings actual mining could still be carried on. ”