Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1902 — PLENTY OF GOLD IN NEW DISTRICT [ARTICLE]

PLENTY OF GOLD IN NEW DISTRICT

Big Creek Belt, Lying West of Thunder Mountain, Is Rich in Ore. DEVELOPMENT IS BEING DONE Snows Will Block the Roads Soon, but With the Opening of Spring a Great Rush to the New Fields Is Looked For. The chief topic of interest among western mining men, and particularly at Boise, Idaho, is the news of the development of that part of Thunder mountain known as the Big Creek district, a belt lying west of the Thunder mountain district proper and comprising a strip of ground twenty miles long and five miles wide. For two or three months it has been known that claims were being located in this belt by mining experts, and considerable work has been done under the direction of men who were supposed to represent eastern capital. But the prospectors and the local mining people were not inclined to look with much enthusiasm on the work. The Thunder mountain boom early in the year, which played out during the summer, has made local mining operators suspicious of the country. Finds Gold and SilverH. H. Hunter of Seattle, representing Colorado capitalists, has a wonderful showing of ore, and is actively at work with a large crew of men driving tunnels, building cabins, etc. The ledge shows on the contact of quartzite and porphry through their property a mile in length, and from 60 to 200 feet wide. It is a clean quartz carrying gold and silver values in considerable quantities. Tunnels are being driven at a depth of 800 feet on the vein on opposite sides of the canon, and, if the values justify, this one property will furnish sufficient tonnage to warrant the building of transportation into the country. Story Is Credited. Hunter is recognized as a conservative mining man, backed by developers, and has gone about his investigations in a systematic way, and has, beyond doubt, centered on what will prove one of the greatest mineral belts in the world. He has let contracts for a number of tunnels and other workings on what is known as the Empress group of mines, on the south fork of Logan creek, in the Big creek district. The mining investors have begun to take more interest in Big creek, for Hunter’s clients are believed to be the most conservative mining people in the country. Assays Are Big. This has been thought to be a country of large tonnage and low values, but instead the assayists report it of high values. The tonnage is unprecedentedly large. The ore occurs on all the properties in the Big creek district in great ledges, many of them exposed along the sheer sides of the mountain for as much as a thousand feet. In the Empress group of mines there is a ledge exposed for a thousand feet down the mountain, averaging seventy feet wide and traceable over a mile. Anywhere along this exposed ledge tock broken off will assay from >7 to >6O in gold and silver values. The mineral is found in contact veins in porphries. Rivals the Transvaal. Mining men in Boise and vicinity believe that a camp has been found in the Big creek district which will rival the South African fields. Naturally in so large a district the country has not been thoroughly prospected, in fact, hardly scratched. The country will be closed by snow in a few weeks and prospectors will hardly have time to get in this year. But a rush is looked for next spring, and it is believed that the new camp on Big creek will develop more rapidly than any gold camp for many years. As the preliminary work this summer has been done under the eyes of expert mining men, backed by capital from the beginning, it has not been an accidental development.