File:To California and back; (1893) (14761215766).jpg

Identifier: tocaliforniaback01higg (find matches)
Title: To California and back;
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Higgins, C. A. (Charles A.) Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company
Subjects:
Publisher: Chicago, Passenger department Santa Fé route
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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lopes to a world below. Alpinetravelers pay the price of extreme fatigue and imperiltheir lives for the sensations of such an experience,which for the American tourist is only an incident,comfortably enjoyed without exertion or danger. LEADVILLE. Just beyond the foot of Hagerman Pass, upon theswell of the mountain-flank, stands the great min-ing-city, at an elevation of 10,000 feet. In April,i860, the first gold-claims were staked out in Cali-fornia Gulch, and within three months thereafter 10,-000 miners had located there. Two claims are said tohave yielded $75,000 in the space of sixty days, andsingle individuals are known to have been rewardedby $100,000 for the work of one summer. In a lit-tle more than a year the field was exhausted, nearly$10,000,000 of the yellow metal having been carriedaway. In the digging of ditches to facilitate thewashing of the auriferous gravel, masses of a heavyblack rock were so commonly encountered as toprove a considerable annoyance, but they were130
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thrown aside and forgotten. These were the famoussilver carbonates, whose value was later revealed bya merely curious assay; and the first body of carbon-ate ore to be worked formed the entire mass of a cliffin California Gulch which had been execrated by in-numerable gold-diggers. The richest ores were notamong the first to be developed, and prospectingand small workings were increasingly carried on fora series of years until, in 1878, two prospectors whowere grub-staked by Mr. Tabor (since Senator)chanced to be crossing Fryer Hill and sat down toimbibe casual refreshment from a jug of whisky. Bythe time they.had become satisfactorily refresh3d allkinds of ground looked alike to them, and in pureimbecility, without the slightest justification, they be-gan to dig where they had been sitting. They un-covered the ore-body of the famous Little Pittsburgmine, which, so exuberantly whimsical is occasionalchance, has since proved to be the only point on theentire hill where the ledge approa

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