Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1901 — UPS AND DOWNS OF MERCUR. [ARTICLE]

UPS AND DOWNS OF MERCUR.

It* Career Only Typical of a Thousand Minins Camps. • The story of Mercur, Utah, is a striking illustration of the ups and downs of a typical mining camp. Many years ago the Indians there were supreme. Arrow-heads and other relics picked up near the site of Mercur indicate that the tribes have at times contested among themselves for. that supremacy with these hills as a battleground. In 1870 silver was discovered on this site and two years later the Carrie Steele mine took out $83,000 in three months, and the Camp Floyd boom leaped to its height. Lewiston sprang up almost In a day where Mercur mow stand/s. The town was in a fever. There were rich strikes, shootings, wild carousals and claim jumpings. The Mormon Chief mine was transformed into a fort, and battles for its possession were frequent. Then the l>ottiom dropped out. The camp was deserted. The sounds of pick and blast were gone from the deep recesses. Bats fluttered unmolested about the rotting timbers. Coyotes slunk into the tunnels and from this vantage ground howled defiance at the fierce wind of winter. For a time the spectral buildings stood gloomily on their stilts, their paneless windows staring vacantly. Then 'decay made them sink gradually into desolate heaps, to be swept away later by fire. in 1880 only one house was left in the entire canyon. There lived solitary Moses Manning, keeping up assessment work on a few claims. In 1881 Arde Pinedo thought he had found quicksilver in the old camp. lie staked out a claim and named it Mercur. But the mercury never paid to develop the claim. In 1883 gold was found in assays, but it could not be extracted. A few- men became interested and carried on mining in a desultory way without success. The Mercur claim was sold as a “gold brick” to a party of Nebraska “tenderfeet.” For years they worked away. Ore was to be found in plenty, and the assays showed large amounts of gold. But every process they tried brought no results iu extracting the precious metal. They exhausted their capital, and in 1893 they were $50,000 in debt and at the end o t their rope.

Gilbert Peyton, one. of the owners, who was a Nebraska druggist, visited the mine. Going through the drawers of the office desk he came upon a pamphlet which had been sent to the foreman. It was fL brief description of the cyanide process, then new in America. With his druggist’s experience Peyton had no difficulty iu mixing a cyanide solution an& testing It in a cupel with some pulverized ore. But the solution did not seem to percolate the powdered ore and the experiments were failures. Sick at heart, Peyton left in the cupel a solution with which he had been making, tests until it was much diluted, and went to bed. The ne'yt morning he noticed that the weakened solution had penetrated the clay cupel. “If the weak solution will go through clay like that, it ought to go through large pieces of ore,” he reasoned. The problem was solved. A weak solution and larger pieces of ore were tried, and the process worked like a charm. The owners of the Mercur mine were transformed into rich men. Moses Manning, the patient hermit, made $15,000. The town of Mercur sprang up, phoenix-like, and is to-day one of the richest gold camps in the United States.—Htigene B. Palmer in Ainslee’s.