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Show LEGAL ASPECTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES EXPLOITATION 711 the Comstock Lode. In its first 6 years the lode produced $50 million which rose to nearly $100 million by 1868, and Virginia City had become one of the wildest mining districts in the West. The camp reached its zenith in 1873 with the discovery, at a depth of well over a thousand feet, of the Big Bonanza which produced one half of the lode's total production (approximately $375 million to 1919) and paid four-fifths of all dividends. Yet, by 1890, the boom in Washoe District, as it was called, was pretty much over although staggering fortunes, particularly as a result of the Big Bonanza, had been made. Tucson, in 1862, completed the advance of the miner from California east and southwest.71 Simultaneously miners pushed northward into Washington, Canada, Idaho, and Montana.72 Thirty-five thousand went to Fraser River, British Columbia, in 1858, and from there they drifted south to the Snake River Valley in Idaho in the early sixties. This was followed by the great Montana gold rush in 1863 where Alder Gulch alone disgorged $30 million worth of gold in 3 years. Idaho produced one bonanza after another from 1861 into the mid-eighties.73 The last frontier of the placer miner and the prospector was the Black Hills in 1875 where miners, undaunted by the Sioux, made 71 Smith, History of the Comstock Lode (1943) is the classic treatment. See also Glasscock, Gold in Them Hills (1932) ; Lord, Comstock Mining and Miners (1966) ; Lyman, The Saga of the Comstock Lode (1934) ; Lyman, Ralston's Ring, California Plunders the Comstock Lode (1937) ; Michelson, The Wonderlode of Silver and Gold (1934). 72 The Northwest frontier is discussed in Trimble, The Mining Advance into the Inland Empire (1914) . See also Caughey, History of the Pacific Coast (1933); Johansen and Gates, Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest (1957) ; Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope (1965) ; Winther, The Great Northwest (1947) . 73 For descriptions of later strikes, see Murdock, Boom Copper (1943); Stoll and Whicker, Silver Strike: The True Story of Silver Mining in the Coeur d'Alenes (1932). Deadwood, South Dakota, one of the most lawless mining districts in American history.74 The fabulous mines in Idaho and Montana were developed by eastern capitalists from the 1880's on. The great Anaconda mines near Butte gave Montana the most colorful legal and political history in the West. It was there that the wars of the great Copper Kings were waged, including the price war between Anaconda and the Calumet and Hecla mines in Michigan, the war between W. A. Clark and Marcus Daly over the political control of Montana, and, last, but especially interesting to the lawyer, the spectacular apex litigation over extra-lateral rights which made F. Augustus Heinze the most sensational figure in copper circles.75 The last word has not been written on Anaconda.76 Congressional Inaction on the Mineral Lands Question: 1850-1866 The failure of Congress to act on the problem of the California gold mines for over 16 years has always been perplexing. Congressmen seemed to be simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the question. This ambivalence is illustrated in the three occasions when the matter was debated extensively between 1850 and 1866. Although there was no agreement on the policy to be adopted, the debates shed considerable light on the temper of the times. During this period, valiant attempts in the States of Arizona, Montana, Colorado, and Idaho to 74 See Briggs, The Black Hills Gold Rush, 5 N.I). Hist. Q. 7 (1931). See also Bennett, Old Df.adwood Days (1935) ; Parker, Gold in the Black Hills (1966) ; Stokes and Driggs, Deadwood Gold (1927) . 75 Connolly, The Devil Learns to Vote (1938) ; Howard, Montana: High, Wide and Handsomf. (1959); Toole, Montana: An Uncommon Land (1959). 78 Marcosson, Anaconda (1957) is a company book. |
