Mercur Mining District

A Tribune representative had the pleasure a few days ago of examining the Mercur mine and mill in old Lewiston district, at the south end of the Oquirrh mountains, near Camp Floyd. The first surprise was in the extent of the mine, and the second in the success gained in the matter of reduction of its ores. The mine is in on the south side of a gulch which runs westward and empties into Rush valley. The Mercur Company owns eighty acres of land in which the flat vein appears to be pretty uniform in thickness wherever it has been prospected. One tunuel has been run in 400 feet through ore which averages ten feet and assays in gold an average of $20 per ton. At places the ore runs up to nineteen feet thick.

The mode of mining so far adopted is novel for mineral, being similar to coal mining. The main tunnel or drift run in 400 feet has been partly paralleled at the right by running here and there cross-cuts twenty feet long, and then making a parallel drift to the tunnel. This leaves large pillars between the cuts similar to coal mining. At one place a cross-cut has been run 150 feet, and at ancther sixty feet, another thirty-five, and others are being started. By open cuts and prospect holes it is shown that this ore is continuous all of 400 feet long and 300 feet wide, and it is believed, from other prospecting, that it underlies all of their eighty acres of patented ground. Besides the gold the ore carries cinnabar, and fifteen years ago the property was sold for a quicksilver mine. The amount of mercury in the mine varies and it is not known what per cent it carries. In early days this district was worked for silver, no one at that time thinking of such a thing as that being a gold country.

The Carrie Steele mine lies on the opposite side of the gulch, directly across from the Mercur, and some fifteen years ago a pocket in that mine produced $80,000 in silver in about three months' time, and the mine has been idle ever since. That mine has low-grade silver ore with pockets of high grade, and it might become a good property if properly worked. There is one thing about the Mercur mine which was a surprise, and that is the small amount of waste.

On the dump there is not much, if any, over 200 tons of waste made in taking out 2000 tons of ore, making less than 10 per cent waste. Mining is so easy that seven men get out thirty tons of ore per day with ease, and keep the teams going. The haul is one and a fourth miles up to the top of of the divide, thence down hill one and three-fourths miles to the mill. It costs less than $1 per ton to mine, and $1.50 to haul the three miles to the mill, making about $2.50 per ton delivered at the mill, where it is treated at a cost of $2.50 per ton.

The company put in a complete mill, amalgamating process, and started it to crushing last spring. Some 1500 tons were run through, and according to the present manager, only about 25 per cent of the assay value of gold was saved. Last summer the amalgamating machinery was taken out, and the "cyanide process" adopted. This will be best understood by a description of operation, as seen by The Tribune man.

The ore, which is quite easily crushed, much of it being soft, is run through a dryer, then crushed in a rock-breaker and passed between a set of Wall rolls, which reduce it fine enough for leaching. The pulp is then put into iron tanks having wooden bottoms, with a perforated bottom a few inches above the other to give space for the liquid to collect. A solution of cyanide of potassium, about milk-warm, is run over and through this pulp, and drawn off below through a trough leading to a tank from which it is pumped up and permitted to again run over the pulp.

This solution attacks the gold in the ore and carries it along in its course. There is a novel way used to extract the gold from the solution. Sheet zinc is purchased, and being wound upon a mandrel is turned into thin, hair-like shavings. These zinc shavings are placed in the long trough leading from the reservoir into which the solution is made, afterwards pumped and kept heated to the proper temperature. The zinc takes up all the gold there is in the solution until the zinc falls in the form of a heavy powder, after which it is taken out and dried in sacks hung up in the office. When dried this product looks much like powdered sandstone and is worth about $30,000 per ton.

Mr. Peyton informed the writer that they are saving over ninety per cent of the assay value of the gold in the ore and that it is not costing them over $2 per ton for treatment. He lumps the cost of mining, hauling to the mill and reduction at less than $5 per ton, add the product is worth about $18 per ton, thus leaving the company a very handsome margin.

The mill is located three miles north of Fairfield station (Camp Floyd) on the Union Pacific road to Tintic. Water in sufficient amount for their use has been obtained by running a number of tunnels and drifts into the hill, a work that was started as long ago as when the notorious Bill Hickman had his ranch there and terrorized the people in that vicinity.

But the most important feature about this mining enterprise is the fact of working gold ores by this leaching process at so small a cost and with such good results. This process has been running only a few weeks, the change in process having been so recently made. Further results will be watched with much interest. It is understood that tests will be made on quite a number of other ores soon with this process.

The Mercur district was formerly called "The Johannesberg of America." What is now Mercur was started in 1870, the town then being called Lewiston. In 1871 the Carrie Steele strike was made and the former town of Lewiston sprang up like a mushroom. In the spring of 1881, Arie Pinedo, a German, located the Mercur lode claim and proceeded to patent it. Pinedo thought he had found a vast body of mercury and the town was named in honor of the discovery. From that time on Mercur has had a varied history. At present another "mercury strike" is reported.

Another noted company, operating in the same district, was the Malvern Gold Mining Company of which Mr. John Dern, father of the present governor of Utah, was president. Mr. Dern was also president of the Mercur mine. With him were associated Dooley, Officer, Dorsey, and others well known in early mining days.

How John Dern was originally induced to wean himself from farming, business and banking pursuits in Nebraska and cast his lot with the mining and kindred in Utah and Nevada, is a romance that would make an extended story in itself. In brief it came about when he and some of his close friends and associates in Nebraska decided to undertake the winning of gold values from the factory mercurial ore deposits of the old camp of Mercur, this state. It was through the investigation of Mr. Dern and his associates, all Nebraska farmers, that the application of the cyanide process to the treatment of Mercur ores was successfully worked out. It was in the start there made that Mr. Dern began his active career as a mine owner of prominence and it was from that beginning that he built up his fortune and became one of the most prorminent figures in the industrial, business and mining life of Utah and the West.