Mercur, Brewster, 1949
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Brewster, Mercur, 1949
Chapter VIII, "A Brief History of Mining in Utah" by Burt B. Brewster, pages 889-892, in "A Centennial History of Utah," edited by Wain Sutton, 1949
[Selected non-geology and non-metallurical text only.]
Although the Mercur District has not been an important contributor to Utah’s gold production since 1917, desspite continued courageous attempts to revive the district, its history, output, dividends and metallurgical significance are highly important.
Strangely enough the district got its name because in 1879 the first discovery was believed to be cinnebar by its locator, who called his claim by the name Mercur, the German for Mercury. Gold was discovered in 1883, following earlier flurries of silver mining which petered out to such an extent that the total recorded silver production of the camp probably has not amounted to more than $100,000.
The leading gold mines of the Mercur District were the Delamar, Geyser-Marion, Mercur, Sacramento, La Cigale, Overland, Sunshine, and Daisey. According to the United States Geological Survey, these mines produced ore valued at $19,034,984 during the period 1890-1917. And reported dividends from the Delamar, Mercur, Geyser-Marion, Sacramento, and Sunshine operations totaled $3,881,323.
After the original Mercur amalgamation mill, built in 1890, demonstrated the process to be non-applicable to Mercur gold ores, the cyanide process was introduced in 1892. Next the Marion mill, built originally to treat silver ore in 1872, which had been converted to an amalgamation plant in 1889, was changed to employ cyanide in 1893. In 1897 this mill was combined with the Geyser mill of 1894 construction. The Sacramento cyanide mill was built in 1895.
Notable recovery failures were registered by the Sunshine (1895), Overland (1898), and the Daisy (1897) cyanide plants.
The Golden Gate mill was built during 1897 and 1898 under the direction of Daniel C. Jackling, who already had his mind on the future Bingham enterprises. It was by far the largest cyanide plant in America, and, insofar as any records show, the first in the world to successfully roast ores of any kind prior to commercial scale leaching with cyanide solutions.
Inaugurated by Jackling in an experimental plant, many new departures were afterwards applied in the operation of the Golden Gate mill until the profitable ores of the Mercur and Golden Gate mines were exhausted.
The Golden Gate mill was the first all-steel nonferrous metallurgical plant of any size in the world. It was the first nonferrous, or for that matter any kind of metallurgical plant, in the Western Hemisphere to use transmitted electrical energy as the source of motive power; the first in the world to use 3-phase induction motors throughout, the single-phase and multi-phase motor having been used only in small installations before.
Probably the most outstanding of all the features incident to the building and operation of the Golden Gate Mill was the transmission of electric energy from the Provo River to Mercur, a distance of 43 miles, at 40,000 volts, transformed at one step at receiving station to a potential of 440 volts, the voltage for which all motors were designed.
Energy in commercial quantities had never before been transmitted as far; never before in commercial quantities transmitted at 40,000 volts or above, or for that matter, at more than a fraction of that potential; never before had a transformer been designed to convert 40,000 volts or other high potential alternating current to a safely usable potential of 440 volts or any other degree of high or low voltage transformation on a commercial scale. The generating and transmission system at Provo and thence to Mercur, and the use of power at the latter point, was the precursor of high potential electric transmission in the world in quantities of more than experimental volume of the nature of 10 or 20 horsepower.
This demonstration of long distance high potential transmission served as a basis for similar activities everywhere and led to an enlargement of the Telluride Power Company’s system for the following fifteen years, when in 1912, the Telluride system was taken, in combination with others to form the basis for the present Utah Power & Electric Company, of which Jack-ling was the first president and operating administrator for a dozen years while the Utah Power & Light Company’s Utah and Idaho power systems were being developed to practically their present status, including, during his tenure of office, the building, from Bear Lake to Salt Lake City, of the largest capacity and highest potential transmission system anywhere—in the form of parallel transmission lines 130 miles long, operating at 130,000 volts.
In a mining sense Mercur was the locale for another innovation in western mining. In 1897, the late Duncan MacVichie brought John McDonald and Joseph Hyland to Mercur to introduce the block caving system of mining, initiated on a small scale in the iron mines in Michigan, for the first time in the West, in the Delamar mine, along with Felix McDonald and Pat Hyland, all of them veteran iron miners. In 1903 it was John McDonald, at the direction of D. C. Jackling, who adapted for the first time, in Bingham, large-scale block caving, to low-grade copper porphyry ores, a system destined to be used in all the large copper porphyry properties where underground mining methods are employed wholly or in part, the forerunner of large scale block caving.
In 1900 the Mercur Gold Mining & Milling Company, of which the late John Dern was the first president, and the Delamar-Mercur Mines Company joined to form the Consolidated Mercur Mines Company. Since these operations ceased in 1913, Mercur has been almost dormant except for attempts to revive activity by the Snyder interests of Salt Lake City and one or two other organizations.
The total gold production of the Mercur District approximates $25,000,000.
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