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Show 295 hydraulic method, with most satisfactory results. At the time this mine was visted ( May, 1875), the entire width of the bed of the gulch, 200 to 300 feet, was being worked, the breast of variable height, 10 to 20 feet. Here was afforded an excellent opportunity to examine the character of the superficial deposits, which are exceedingly variable both in > the fineness of their components and their distribution in irregular layers. The coarse materials, pebbles and bowlders, are rounded by abrasion, coarser and finer interstratified, often inclosing " nockets" filled with gravel, and all resting upon the so- called " bedrock". The latter consists of partially- indurated, tenacious, red clay of considerable though variable depth, and which in turn rests upon the true bed- rock, which is here a coarse- textured, light or grayish, granitic rock, very like that occurring in the opposite or southeastern flank of Great Baldy. This rock is exposed at one or two places near the foot of the claim, and where much weathered it was slightly iron stained red. The indurated red clay, which it is said is met with in nearly all the gulches on this side of Baldy, may have resulted from the disintegration of this rock.* Very similar rock crops out in low ragged ridges or " rims" on the west side of the Moreno opposite Grouse Gulch, above and below Eliza-bethtown. The red clay is said to contain gold, but its exceeding tenacity prevents the working of only the upper portion, in which rich " pay-streaks" are encountered. The mining- season lasts about five months, beginning in May. The supply of " free" water, which is collected in private reservoirs during the winter and early spring, lasts four to six weeks, when the supply is drawn from the big ditch, a canal deriving its waters from springs at the source of Bed Kiver on the west side of the watershed, and, circumventing the head of the Moreno, is carried high up on the flank of Great Baldy, terminating near the head of Grouse Gulch. A single season's expense for water drawn from this source in working this mine amounted to $ 5,000. The results of a season's operations at the " cleaning up" indicated an average of about one dollar per cubic yard; it is claimed that the mine can be profitably worked for one- tenth the yield above recorded per cubic yard. Other placer- mines are being worked on this side of the mountain, though none quite as extensively as the claim above noticed. Passing up the grassy hill- side which rapidly ascends from the Moreno, and which is gashed by the unsightly washes of sluices and accidental breaks from the several supply- ditches which have been carried round the mountain, we gain a wooded shoulder perhaps a thousand feet above the town, and are fairly set out on the trail to the head of Willow Creek and the Blackhorse Pass. The way traverses a steep wooded declivity on the southwest flauk of Baldy, part of the way alongside the Moreno ditch, which terminates near here amlgradually ascends to the elevated flats in the vicinity of the head of Willow Gulch, which were once populous with mining- camps, as the numerous deserted log-cabins on evey hand attest. The mountain- side is perforated with prospect excavations, treacherous pit- falls to the unwary horseman, and stripped of its once fine forests, either for the use of the mines or destroyed by the fires. Placer- mining obliterates whatever attractiveness a locality may have originally possessed, and these once wild picturesque ravines and high aspen- fringed mountain- glades are not only * It is strikingly analogous to some of the deposits resulting from the still ( so to speak) disintegration observed in the Brazilian mountains, where the process may be examined hi all its various stages, from the unchanged granitic and gneissose native ledges up into the thoroughly- comminuted red paste, with its overspreading sheet of drift at the surface. No. 4 2 |
