Mining town

“ The return horse is a result of the necessities of mountain sections, especially the needs of miners. Most Western mining-towns are located upon a flat or in a gulch. The mines are rarely near the town, but are on the mountain-slopes above it. Out of town go a dozen roads or trails that extend to the mines, from one to five miles away, and 116 much higher than the town. A miner does not mind walking down to the town, but he wants to ride back; or the prospector comes in and wants to take back a few supplies. The miner hires a return horse, rides it to the mine, and then turns the horse loose. ”

“ I found many of the miners in town on account of the high state of water in the rivers. My friends who had visited the interior, spoke discouragingly of the mines, preferring the mercantile business. But goods were at the time selling at less than New York prices, and rents were enormously high. Many of the merchants were anxious to sell out and go into the mines, and I came to the conclusion that mining was the only sure way of making a fortune. ”

“ Mining is the chief industry of the region, which is rich in deposits of lead and zinc. The city added some eight thousand to its population in the previous decade, the number of its inhabitants now being 6,096, employment being given to many of them in the town's stamping and smelting works and other industrial activities. ”

“ Until recently it was not thought much of, gold-mining having deadened all other kinds of mining in the colony. Now, however, things have taken a turn, and quite a large settlement has sprung up, and over 2000 men are on the field. A good town has been formed where three months before was a dense forest, and solitude reigned supreme. Jarrah growing on the spot, and two timber-mills being close by, nearly all the houses are built of the handsome dark wood, are thus much more pleasing than the usual tents and camps of mining places, and stand out well against the tall green forest trees. ”

“ No man could be told by his dress.
The great day of days in a mining-camp was Sunday. Some over-enthusiastic fortune-seekers worked the diggings also on that day; but by general consent—uninfluenced, it may be remarked, by religious considerations—the miners repaired to their little town for amusement and relaxation. These little towns were almost all alike. There were usually two or three combined hotels, saloons, and gambling-houses, built of logs, of slabs, of canvas, or of a combination of the three. ”

“ Reporting was lucrative, and every man in the town was lavish with his money and his “feet.” The city and all the great mountain side were riddled with mining shafts. There were more mines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock worth hauling to a mill, but everybody said, “Wait till the shaft gets down where the ledge comes in solid, and then you will see!” ”

“ Prior to 1895 the population was essentially nomadic, but with the transitions in the stages of mining districts—from unworked claims to mines, from wildernesses cursorily examined to systematic development, from mining camps to mining towns—the goldfields people began to assert their rights by calling for an amelioration of their condition. Chambers of Mines were formed, and devoted themselves to the interests of the mining industry. ”

“ Thus the agreement was drawn up, and the Golden West Mining Company was formed from the two parties.
At the base of the ridge there almost immediately sprang into being the town of Gold Hill, for which Mr. Adams himself was elected alcalde, or mayor, and Mrs. Motte clerk. But the development of the Golden West mine went ahead much more slowly. Paying mines, especially lode mines, do not grow up in a day, or a week, or a month. ”

“ It has a settled population of 23,000, but in winter, when the gold-washing ceases, the population is swelled by the addition of about 4000 miners, who pass the winter in town, and manage to spend every farthing of their earnings before the mining season comes round again. ”

“ Up in the mountains I visited the three mining towns of Black Hawk, Central City, and Nevada. The district to which these towns belong had a population of fifteen thousand persons engaged in mining, but I found several of the mills not at work, and was told that the population had lately fallen off considerably. In the neighbourhood of these towns all the timber has been cut down for building and mining; and as everything that would burn has also been cleared off for fuel, every accessible mountain has been made as bare as a ploughed field. ”

“ These mines, with their prolonged subterranean workings, their stamping and crushing mills, and the smelting works which have been established near them, fill the district with noise, hubbub, and smoke by night and day; but I had turned altogether aside from them into a still region, where each miner in solitude was grubbing for himself, and confiding to none his finds or disappointments. Agriculture restores and beautifies, mining destroys and devastates; turning the earth inside out, making it hideous, and blighting every green thing, as it usually blights man's heart and soul. ”

“ Bulong is a mining township 12 miles from Kanowna, and [245] as several good finds have been made there, one of 500 ounces of gold, I should not be at all surprised to hear of a more sensational find some day, followed by the inevitable rush. The Queen Margaret Mine has given good returns, and there are a number of men on the alluvial ground who make a good living, and a little to spare, all the year round. ”

“ The isolation and transitory character of the mining towns made the miners almost completely dependent upon the owners of the mines not only for homes but also for tools and powder; all their mining, as well as their household, supplies. To this day in the non-union fields of West Virginia the operators finance and control, not only the stores, but the schools, the hospitals, the doctors, the churches, and the police. ”

“ These deposits are naturally the first to fail in productiveness, but the neighboring hills are formed of a gold-bearing quartz which is being crushed, night and day, by hundreds of powerful machines; and the works still pay ten thousand miners fair day-wages, besides giving the organized companies who employ them satisfactory dividends. Thus mining has been largely robbed of its adventurous character in this neighborhood, and perhaps also of most of its alluring charm, having become a sort of regular industry, like coal-mining, or even brick-making. ”

“ Flanking the foot of Mount Davidson, the towns of Gold Hill and Virginia and the long street between were fairly underburrowed and underpinned by the gigantic mining construction of that opulent lode whose treasures were actually glutting the mineral markets of the world. The streets overhead seethed and swarmed with miners, mine owners, and adventurers—riotous, rollicking children of fortune, always ready to drink and make merry, as eager in their pursuit of pleasure as of gold. Comstockers would always laugh at a joke; the rougher the better. ”

“ No costly mansions, built with time and care, adorn the place, and no spacious business blocks, with their beautiful polished fronts, are seen; but the great mining metropolis of the Union stands with her hastily-reared cabins among the green stumps of the late forest, and her hundreds of tents glitter upon the hill-sides that have been left rugged by the spade of the hungry miner. ”

“ A person unacquainted with the details of mining, on being informed of many hundreds of men being employed in a single mine, might naturally imagine that a visit to their deep recesses would afford a picturesque and imposing spectacle of gregarious labour and bustle, tremendous noise, and much artificial brilliancy to cheer the gloom. Nothing, however, is further from the truth, as far as regards the mines of Cornwall; for, like their fellow labourers the moles, the miners are solitary in their operations. ”

“ In those regions which have had long immunity from strikes, and in which work at full time has been the rule, the mine-workers are not only comfortable, but frequently are prosperous. They rarely occupy rooms in the cheap tenement houses of the towns, even if such occupancy would be to their convenience. They prefer to live in the outlying districts, where they can have homes of their own and gardens that they may cultivate. In the colliery villages the lots are usually laid out and sold or rented by the mining company to its workmen. ”

“ The mining districts attract with rapidity a large population, made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shop-keepers, &c., that group themselves around them. The ground-rents are high, as they are generally where population is dense. The master tries, therefore, to run up, within the smallest space possible at the mouth of the pit, just so many cottages as are necessary to pack together his hands and their families. If new mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are again set working, the pressure increases. ”

“ On weekdays and special occasions, these trading centers take on the appearance of pioneer towns, with hitching rails, haphazard sidewalks, and crude plumbing; riders on horseback, buckboards, and buggies; and men with tanned faces and alert eyes in chaps and spurs, or blue jeans and stetsons. It was mining that, in the nineties, brought the valley its first and only boom; and mines, gold, silver, lead, tungsten, and copper, are being worked in the surrounding hills today. Cattle and sheep are also raised here, and some logging is also carried on ”

“ And it is a long process, and a costly one, before the lumps of heavy dirt which the miner pecks out of the inside of a hill are transformed into those hundredweight blocks of silver bullion which the train from Park City carries every morning of the year into Salt Lake City. From first to last it is pretty much as follows. Remember I am not writing for those who live inside mines; very much on the contrary. I am writing for those who have never been down a mine in their lives, but who may care to read an unscientific description of "mining," and the Ontario mine in particular. ”

“ Indeed, this system of mining partakes of the nature of quarrying rather than that of mining in the ordinary sense, the ore being scooped from the surface of the ground. One naturally thinks of a mine as being subterranean; but in the great open-pit mines in the Lake Superior region, which are the largest mines in the world, all the mining is done at the surface of the earth. ”

“ The miner should never excavate the low-lying plain, nor one which is perfectly level, unless it be in some mountain, and rarely should he mine in the other kinds of plains.
With regard to the conditions of the locality the miner should not contemplate mining without considering whether the place be covered with trees or is bare. If it be a wooded place, he who digs there has this advantage, besides others, that there will be an abundant supply of wood for his underground timbering, his machinery, buildings, smelting, and other necessities. ”

“ Many thrilling stories of the dare-devil work of these highwaymen are told, and will long be remembered as a part of the history of the settlement and development of the region round about Deadwood. Large treasures of gold dust taken from the mines were frequently shipped out on the stages, and many men of wealth traveled over the line, going in for the purpose of starting in business or making mining investments. ”

“ The want of capitalists in the mine country, and of practical skill in the boring, blasting, sinking shafts and galleries, oppose obstacles to the [Pg 160] successful progress of mining. There is but one regular hearth-furnace for smelting in the whole district; and that is on the modern plan of English furnaces. There are not over four or five regular shafts in about forty mines; there is not an engine, either by horse, steam, or water power, for removing water from the mines, several of which have been abandoned on this account, with rich prospects of ore in view. ”

“ Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of digging it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The miner should try to obtain a mine, to which access is not difficult, in a mountainous region, gently sloping, wooded, healthy, safe, and not far distant from a river or stream by means of which he may convey his mining products to be washed and smelted. ”

“ Since the first discovery of lead in this Territory, the number of mines has been much increased, and hardly a season passes without some new discovery. Every discovery of importance soon becomes the centre of mining attraction. As the ore is found in the diluvial soil, it is generally exhausted on reaching the solid rock; and after penetrating a considerable area of the surface with any, or but partial success, the locality is abandoned, and a new one sought. As the mines are worked without capital, and the ore is dispersed over a wide area, the number of localities is almost indefinite. ”