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Show MINING FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES. 577 estimation. In addition to these discoveries of smelting ores, a score of rich strikes of free milling silver- bearing and gold- bearing ores and quartz were made. Some of these are located on Ball Mountain and Breece Hill, and give magnificent returns in gold, while other rich silver- bearing quartz ledges have been opened on Yankee Hill and in Colorado Gulch. The history of Leadville is a Rocky Mountain romance in real life. When the first invasion struck the territory, the eager gold hunters prospected every gulch on the eastern slope; and in the spring of 1860, parties of Gilpin County miners crossed South Park and dis-covered rich placers on the head- waters of the Arkansas. These were so much like the old placers of California that they named the local-ity California Gulch, and in a few months a continuous line of claims and cabins stretched along the Gulch thirty- three thousand feet. One claim for awhile yielded $ 1,000 per day, and a single firm took out $ 60,000. They named the principal settlement Oro, and a few of its cabins still stand. Before Christmas, 1860, the camp contained some five thousand men, with all the accompaniments of saloon, store, dance house, and gambling hall, in which the lucky miner too often parted with his bonanza. Gold dust was the usual medium of exchange, by weight at $ 18 per ounce. In one year the gulch yielded about a million dollars; then one by one the placers were worked out, and the slow decline began. In 1865 but few miners remained, and the total yield to that time was esti-mated at three millions. In 1869 it was but $ 60,000; in 1876 but $ 20,000 ; and then for a short time there was no town of Oro. But some observing men had noticed a few things which they kept to themselves till they had secured Government title to their claims. Messrs. Stevens and Wood remarked the extraordinary weight of the boulders displaced in placer mining, analyzed the metal, and found silver. They quietly secured titles to nine claims, and began to de-velop. Maurice Hayes and brother, the Gallagher brothers, and a Mr. Durham also made similar discoveries. Meanwhile the Printer's Boy and some other gold lodes had been opened and worked. At length, in the autumn of 1876, the Gallaghers struck a big deposit of rich carbonates, and in a few weeks several others " struck it rich"; then California Gulch awoke from its long sleep and the era of mod-ern Leadville began. For fifteen years miners had taken out one kind of ore directly over fabulous wealth of another kind, without even suspecting it. In how many old camps are they doing the same thing even now? 37 |