Tintic Stories

With the North Lily, Eureka Standard and Eureka Lily mines producing a considerable tonnage of high grade gold ore there has been some discussion locally regarding the mining of this metal in other Tintic properties. The Mammoth mine is generally credited with having shipped the richest gold ore that ever left the Tintic district, carloads which brought more than $100,000 each, but there are old time miners in this section who claim that ore running much higher in gold came from the stopes of the Centennial Eureka mine.

Such stories can hardly be verified for the reason that officials of the United States Mining & Smelting Co. have not seen fit to make public the value of the ore which they took from the Centennial Eureka mine, but it is quite generally understood that one of their old stopes, the Delaware, produced four carloads of ore that averaged better than $140,000 to the carload.

Every possible effort was made to prevent the dissemination of information regarding the high grade ore that was mined during the most prosperous days of the old Centennial Eureka mine. The assays, reaching the miners and their bosses, were almost without exception more or less misleading. The superintendent and his foreman undoubtedly knew just what values the ore contained but it was thought advisable to keep everyone else in the dark. A common way of writing an assay report was to place "1 oz plus" in the gold column and "10 ozs. plus" in the silver column. Assays showed that the ore was of shipping grade; the miners did not need to know anything more about it.

The company [USSR&M] owned its own smelting plant and it was an easy matter to classify the ore in such a way that in the process of reduction it would bring the most money and nothing was done to arouse the suspicion of the miners, although it is quite certain that some of them were wise to the sensational value of the ore in which they were working. If miners did have knowledge of the high value of the rock it is of course reasonable to suppose that a certain amount of "high-grading" took place during the mining of the rich gold streaks.

Copper and silver were the principal metals in the Centennial Eureka ore but there was scarcely a carload of ore shipped from that mine during the thirty years of constant production, that did not carry fairly good values in gold. Taking the hundreds of thousands of tons of ore as a whole it is perhaps safe to say that the average gold content per ton was around $8, hence the Centennial Eureka was in reality a very heavy producer of gold.

This mine, at the peak of its production which probably covered a period of not less than twelve years, shipped a total of four hundred tons of ore daily, working six days a week for several years. Before that the output was around three hundred tons daily with operations continuing throughout the seven days of the week. Then there was another much later period, of about six or seven years, during which time an effort was made to hold shipments of ore up to 250 tons per day which tonnage gradually feathered out until operations were practically suspended in 1925.

One story with reference to the Centennial Eureka gold ore that has occasionally been told, is probably worth repeating at this time. It was to the effect that a "shifter" realizing the unusual character of the ore, carried to the company’s office a large sample about the size of a small head of cabbage. He said it was such a beautiful specimen that he could not resist taking it out of a mine car that was being loaded in the old Delaware stope. Instead of getting excited about the specimen and thus letting everyone in on the secret, the superintendent left it kicking around the office for some weeks or months during which time it was used as a door stop. Then it was finally turned over to an assayer and when melted up that single hunk of rock was found to contain more than $500 worth of gold. If "high-grading" was going on at the Centennial Eureka mine during the mining of this rich gold ore, it would be of interest to know how many specimens of that character were carried out of the property by workmen.

After all, the discovery of gold ore in the eastern end of the Tintic District is not so remarkable. Tintic is simply living up to its former reputation as a section wherein there are liable to be many real surprises. Not all of the district's history has been written, by any means; not all of its high grade ores have been opened; and if the long rejected and despised quartzite is to be productive of gold ore there Is a possibility of many new and even greater mines than any yet discovered to this locality.