Best Viewed in 800x640 using Internet Explorer




Silver City
NM





Gold Mining Terminology

A diggings - as the word shows, is one of those spots where gravel has been dug and sifted in search for the yellow treasure. (The word placer and diggings, means one and the same thing.)

Assay A test of ores by chemical methods to determine the amount of precious metals they contain.

Carbon in pulp (CIP) - The name of the process by which gold and silver are liberated from the ore. The gold and silver are dissolved in large tanks and then adsorbed onto carbon granules


Claim monuments - A pile of rocks about three feet in diameter and two feet high, topped with a locations stick that had the name of the mine and the finder. Inside the pile of rock would be a tin setting forth the conditions of the claim, so many days to do work, and measure of his land area, and time enough to file the record at the county seat.

Float - Mineral rich ore (a rock) that had been dislodged from its source and was moved by nature. A prospector would try to locate the source of this rock and then stake a claim.

Placer gold, or free gold was supposedly washed into the creeks and gullies during the alluvial age, but a placer is sometimes formed by erosion also. The gold generally lies thickest on bedrock and is known as paystreak. The gravel or wash is found in depths ranging from a few inches to three or four hundred feet.

Placer Mining - A gravely sandbank, generally located in an ancient river bed, where loose gold is usually found.

Troy ounce - system of weight employed in Great Britain and the U.S., used for the weighing of precious metals. The name is derived from the city of Troyes, France, where the system originated. The troy pound is 340 g (12 oz), and the troy ounce is the basis of apothecary weight.

Tunnel mining at that time was done by DOUBLE STRIKING; that is one man turned the drill and the other struck the head of it with a eight pound hammer.

 

Gold Panning

Sluice Box

Hydraulic Mining




A deposit that is not to deep can be worked by pick and shovel, but from ten feet to hundreds of feet deep have been worked by hydraulic pressure since the earliest days of mining history in the West. Outfits and companies often build immense reservoirs high up in the mountains, piping the water to the diggings for hydraulic purposes. In hydraulic mining a strong current of water is forced into the placer dislodging the sand and gravel, which is caught in a sluice-box.

The sluice-box was built of plain rough lumber like a trough with both ends left open. Slats, or riffles, which were blocks of wood, rails, poles, iron bars, and often sacking, matting, or hides with the hair up, were laid crosswise on the bottom of the sluice-box, being farther apart at the end of the box than at the beginning. The riffles caught the free gold.

Through the sieve in the end of the long tom the sand was forced into the sluice-box by a stream of water. As it passed by slight incline through the sluice-box, gold being slow of movement dragged back and dodged against the riffles.



Other Mineral Mining

a city.

Many of the old-timer knew very little of horn silver, chlorides, bromides, or bornites, and what he did know often did him very little good. On acount of the long hauls to Denver or Omaha, the cost of building the roads, and the high treatment charges, the ore had to be rich. Many were the hardships of these early prospectors in the Southwest. The minerals were not easy to get like placer ores of California, nor did they resemble the free-muilling quartz ores of Colorado, Montana, and Nevada. They are all smelting, or refractory ores, and the character of the mineral was different. They had to be assayed by fire, and often it was weeks after making a strike before the prospector found out it's value.

The ore is usually crushed and separated in floatation tanks first, then calcined (gives off noxious sulphur dioxide) before smelting with charcoal. This gives an alloy which may contain some or all of the following, lead, zinc, silver, gold, and cadmium. The latter are only ever present in tiny levels usually.



a city.

Early prospectors relied heavily on burros as they trekked long distances across the deserts in search of gold and silver. Many of these burros survived, even though their owners perished under the harsh desert conditions. Many more burros escaped or were released during the settlement of the West. Because of their hardiness, Wild Burros have thrived throughout the North American deserts, and their numbers have increased to perhaps 20,000.

Many miners and prospectors found they had a true friend they could talk to, palaver with and even complain to, as well as rely on for survival... a friend who was so loyal and hard working, so tough and so strong, and often so reciprocal that their relationship passed the bounds of simple friendship. Miners often became so attached to their burros that they frequently shared their flapjacks and biscuits with them. And in return, it was these same loyal friends who always seemed to make sure their owner's "necessities" somehow made it over the next hill - from camp to camp - day to day - month in and month out.

Perhaps it's the tenacious nature of burros... perhaps it's their appealing and loveable nature... perhaps it's their strength, their loyalty or their endurance... but one thing's for certain: more heartwarming stories have emerged from the mining days in the 1800's and early 1900's that feature a burro than perhaps any other animal.