Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 December 1897 — KLONDIKE OUTDONE. [ARTICLE]

KLONDIKE OUTDONE.

Rich Gold Mountains in the Rugged Wilds of Wyoming. The discovery of gold at Grand Encampment, Wyoming, in such quantities as staggers belief is reported. Mining experts who have looked over the ground believe that developments will uncover an entire mountain of gold, which will relegate all other gold districts to insignificance: Wyoming has suddenly blazed up as the possible, even probable, richest country in the World. People there and all around are mad. Everybody is rushing to Grand Encampment in spite of snow and cold. The excitement is higher than anything within the memory of the oldest miner, not excepting tlife days of ’49. Grand Encampment is sixty miles from the nearest railroad. It is situated in the heart of the Sierra Madre mountains. It lies west of the Platte river. The nearest towns are Rawlins, Saratoga, Walcott and Fort Steele. The district is one of the most rugged and wildest in the West, but there is no Klondike desolation there, for the resources are ample. It was a honeycombed rock, scarcely larger in diameter than the wheel of an ordinary farm wagon, that has precipitated the gold boom, started a gold camp and made the residents of Wyoming gold mad. A white quartz surface float in Purgatory gulch, unheeded there, perhaps, for centuries, has been found to hold within its flint-like walls a golden treasure amounting to $24,584, or $3,512, in round numbers, for each ton of its weight. If Klondike and Cripple Creek had both suddenly been transferred to Carbon County, Wyoming, and all the gold fields of the Transvaal had settled in the mountain gulches along the Grand Encampment river it would be difficult to conceive a greater excitement than has been wrought among the natives by the golden wonder and its less productive neighbors upon the surrounding hills. Where less than a month ago not fifty people resided in an area of more than 300 square miles, to-day hundreds of anxious prospectors are scouring mountain and canyon in the hope of finding the golden vein from which these immense boulders must have been eroded ages ago. It seems * to be the old story over again—’49 revived. Leadville in the early ’Bos nnd Cripple Creek in the early ’9os. And no matter what may be the ultimate outcome of it all, for the present at least, the eyes of Wyoming are turned from Klondike, and the big Western State is nursing a child of her own. j Nor is Wyoming’s gold excitement seemingly unwarranted. Mining experts of high standing pronounce the surface indications of the new district to be far greater than those of either Cripple Creek or Leadville. In depth alone can the mineral wealth of a lode claim be actually determined, and as no slinft or prospect hole in the district lias as yet been sunk to a grenter depth than fifteen or twenty feet, surface indications remain the only means of estimating the wealth of the camp. ‘l Four miles southwest of the new town of Grand Encampment is a mountain largely covered with golden float. It is looked upon ns being one of the wonders of the camp, nnd has been called the “Mountain of Gold.” It is perhaps 3,000 by 6,000 feet in diameter, and at its crest is 8,500 feet above the level of the sea. Nine-great parallel dikes of heavily mineralized quartz traverse it from northeast to southwest. These dikes are all cropping and stand out as plain as the rows of corn in a field. Quartzite and mica schist separate them from each other, and experienced miners believe that with depth the dikes will all converge nnd form one mammoth body of ore. The float on this mountain is by far the richest yet discovered in the camp. Pieces no larger than a hen’s egg have been found to run from 50 cents to one dollar pure gold, and chosen chunks from the dikes have assayed as high ns $71,000 a ton.