Otis E. Young - Western Mining: An Informal Account of Precious Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining and Milling on the American Frontier from Spanish Times T

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title	:	Western Mining : An Informal Account of Precious-metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling On the American Frontier From Spanish Times to 1893
author	:	Young, Otis E.; Lenon, Robert.
publisher	:	University of Oklahoma Press
isbn10 | asin	:	0806113529
print isbn13	:	9780806113524
ebook isbn13	:	9780585293257
language	:	English
subject	Mines and mineral resources--West (U.S.)--History.
publication date	:	1977
lcc	:	TN23.6.Y68 1977eb
ddc	:	622/.0978
subject	:	Mines and mineral resources--West (U.S.)--History.

Page iii Western Mining An Informal Account of Precious-Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling on the American Frontier from Spanish Times to 1893 by Otis E Young, Jr. With the Technical Assistance of Robert Lenon UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS: Norman

Page iv Books by Otis E Young, Jr. The First Military Escort on the Santa Fe Trail (Glendale, 1952) The West of Philip St. George Cooke (Glendale, 1954) How They Dug the Gold (Tucson, 1967) Western Mining (Norman, 1970) Black Powder and Hand Steel (Norman, 1976) Disclaimer: This book contains characters with diacritics. When the characters can be represented using the ISO 8859-1 character set ( http://www.w3.org/TR/images/latin1.gif ), netLibrary will represent them as they appear in the original text, and most computers will be able to show the full characters correctly. In order to keep the text searchable and readable on most computers, characters with diacritics that are not part of the ISO 8859-1 list will be represented without their diacritical marks. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-108800 ISBN: 0-8061-1352-9 Copyright 1970 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Page v This book is for my mother, MADGE OLIVER YOUNG, who has tolerated the vagaries of two generations of Old West enthusiasts and who, it seems quite likely, is in a way to be subjected to the attentions of a third

Page vii Preface In American Frontier Studies the techniques of the mining rushes are perhaps the least comprehensible to the student of the era. The most popular chroniclers were not very experienced in prospecting, mining, or milling, and though they could communicate passably well, they tended to gloss over their unfamiliarity with practical matters. The techniques took years to master, even in the frontier period, and all too often the ability to communicate decreased as technical knowledge increased. For example the authoritative works of Egleston, Lakes, and Rickard might as well be written in Old High Gothic for all the good that the unsophisticated reader can derive from them. It is perhaps inevitable that a profession develops its own special vocabulary, but that can be a mixed blessing, since the vocabulary tends to isolate the profession from the main currents of human experience. Standard glossaries and references are of little utility in deciphering professional books; they shed some light but still leave the problem dimly illuminated. To grasp merely the essentials of frontier mining and metallurgy requires not only a familiarity with the vocabulary but also a knowledge of the rudiments of chemistry and geology, as well as an acquaintance with some very arbitrary mechanics. Perhaps that is why the historiography of the mining rushes emphasizes so heavily what went on in the camps but has so little to say about what was going on underground. The principal aim of this book is to present by word and illustration a broad outline of the methods by which gold and silver were won from the earth in the Old West. It may additionally serve as an introduction to the literature and as an extended glossary for reference purposes. For these reasons, critical remarks are offered about the utility of the selected bibliography for the historian and student. To assist the reader who wishes to find quickly a definition of a desired term, the italicized page reference in the index is intended to be a guide to the appropriate pas-

Page viii sage in the text. Some of the phraseology is outdated by present scientific standards, but has been preserved for the sake of reasonable uniformity with quoted passages. The reader is cautioned that this book should not be regarded as a prospectus for get-rich-quick gold finding. All the high-grade surface bonanzas were located, worked out, and their bones picked clean half a century or more ago. If important mineral deposits remain to be found in North America, they will be prospected by complicated geophysical methods and worked by elaborate milling procedures whose cost is prohibitive for all but very large corporations. Neither should any mining engineer suppose that this book is an attempt to poach upon his grove. A glance will assure him that the quantitative aspects of mining and milling which are his chief concern are covered only in the most general way. Historians are warned that this account is not an attempt to be either definitive or original. Only the most interesting (to me) strikes, mines, and techniques were selected to point the appropriate moral. The materials consulted were chiefly the best-known memoirists of the period and the major secondary histories. The ideas discussed herein are presented without much criticism of their technical rights and wrongs, for it is a principle of historiography that it was not metaphysical Truth but only what people currently believed to be true that inspired their actions and so provided the raw materials of history.

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