Mohave County Miner

The Greatest Camp.

Without disparagement of other great mining centers of the metallic west, the supremacy of Butte may easily be conceded upon the showing of her enormous output of precious and commercial metals. And yet, notwithstanding the glory of her unequaled past, she has only reached the degree of exploitation in her dazzling career, and her destiny leads many decades into the present century, with the warranted promise of achievements unrivalled in fact or fiction. To those who have watched her evolve from stage to stage in her sometimes hampered and again meteoric advancement, may be pardoned a just pride in the child of their hope, now entering in the full strength of certainty upon a wider and greater era of development. Having disproved by practical demonstration theories of those who derided and would have stifled in their birth the great mining industries inaugurated here in early days, the men who never wavered in their faith in Butte are now confronted with a vista of the camp's future greatness which shades even their most sanguine dreams.

The area of the mines to be numbered among the great producers of Butte is not marked by the surface boundaries of the present producers, but reaches north, south, east and west, and embraces a vast territory, as yet better known through underground indications in the producing mines than from surface indications upon the undeveloped properties. Take the eastern extension of the well defined copper belt. After leaving the Anaconda hill a wide strip of valley intervenes before reaching the mountains, where croppings again occur, and the valley is covered to a depth of four hundred feet with wash. Underneath the wash are not less than eight copper-bearing veins, pointing straight from the mines in Butte to the mountains on the east, in which they again appear on the surface, though denuded at the surface to a great extent of copper through the precipitation of the metal. When we speak of eight copper veins crossing the flat we do so advisedly, bearing in mind the sworn evidence to that effect of expert geologists. That this great storehouse of mineral will be opened up and added to the Butte metal supply there can be no possible question. Even now capitalists who have heretofore made a success of mining in Silver Bow county have secured large tracts of this territory and rapid and systematic development work is in progress.

Beyond the flat is the foothills adjacent to the mountains. Mr. Heinze has exploited largely and is shipping ore regularly, we are informed, from the Homestake mine, while other properties of his are making such showing as warrants the belief that within no long period the necessities of commerce will demand the building of an important city along the base of the foothills. Farther back in the mountains, yet upon the belt, individuals of lesser means are doing what they can to develop and render marketable their claims, and many of these latter holdings are now being examined by experts employed by mining companies with the view of securing options upon them.

When the drifts upon the ore levels have crossed the flat, tapped at convenient places by ventilating shafts, and are extended into the mountains, the very bowels of those grim barriers to weak effort will be at the command of commerce. To estimate the magnitude of the result is beyond the compass of computation, for a field of such inexhaustible resource will have been opened up as no mining enterprise of either ancient or modern times has ever exposed.

Extending south from the present working mines numerous veins are known to exist in fact. Excavation at almost any point in the southern flat discloses leads, and many of them at slight depth have produced profitable commercial ore. As on the east side, the wash on the south side is of great depth, but the best judgment of all who have made a study of Butte's environment is in accord upon the theory that the copper belt has its bedding in the flat, and that it will be found more solidified and richer there than upon its outer rims.

Good copper ore has been mined six miles west of Butte, and the intervening territory, while producing from shallow workings silver as the preponderating mineral, gives good indications that at sufficient depth silver will give place to copper and the true belt will be found continuous, and to conform to its characterization as known in the established copper mines of the camp.

Thus it will be seen that the producing area of Butte is but an open door, disclosing the matchless realm of mineral, far surpassing in its immensity the most reckless prophesy of earlier times. Much of this positive knowledge of area and resources is of comparatively recent acquisition, and should not be classed as idle or extravagant, but rather accepted as the return for large investment of capital and the employment of brawn and brain.

With this mental vision of Butte's great treasure house, over which the city itself stands like a sentinel at the entrance, it is not too much to assert that this is the greatest mining camp of any age. Men who have had part in founding this city will have passed into the great beyond, and men who are now in the flower of manhood will wither in the decadence of age, and still the gold-tinted copper stream will flow from the smelters as they turn their blasts upon the ores of Butte. Science, commerce and industry will continue to look hither for those essentials to maintenance we have so largely furnished, and the nation and other nations will continue to be benefitted by the peerless product of our mines, and even the dawning of a new century may fail to bring with it the mantle of oblivion that must ultimately cover our great mining industries.—Mining Record.