Digital Bob Archive

APRIL 10, 1882-For several months past the principal mining activity in this camp has been solely on paper. So many mining property transfers have taken place that Recorder Richard Dixon has been hard put to keep up with them. A few involve placer ground, and these are all serious transactions. A miner whose own claim is a poor producer tries to buy an interest in a better one, usually a third or a half interest, with the intention of helping to work it.

But most of the recorded transactions involve lode claims, of which there are now several hundred in the district. Nearly every miner in camp has at least one lode claim, as yet completely untested. His game is to get an interest in as many other lodes as possible, in the hope that at least one of them will turn into a mine. It is seldom that any money changes hands in these deals. It is all done by trading. Interests in lode claims are expressed in feet rather that in percentages. Each full claim is 1500 feet long and 600 feet wide. ?Fifteen feet? of a claim would not actually be a 15-foot piece across the entire width, but one per cent interest in the entire claim; ?150 feet? would be a 10 per cent interest.

Let us say that a miner named Bill owns all of the Liberty claim, which he discovered and staked himself. He isn?t sure of its worth, so he trades 150 feet of it to Tom for 150 feet in the Minerva lode and another 150 feet to Jack for a like amount in the Hancock lode. He now has interest in three lode claims, in different areas, and has acquired two partners in his Liberty lode. There have been dozens and dozens of such transactions, all of them duly recorded in the books of the Harris Mining District.

But now the real mining activity has started all along Gold Creek despite the fact that the avalanche season in the valley is at its height. Files of Indian packers head up the trail to Silver Bow Basin every day, carrying lumber and other supplies. They are remarkable men, these packers, carrying immense loads over the steep and often slippery trail for a dollar a day. The trail goes up Franklin Street to the vicinity of where Sixth Street has been marked out. Then it turns east and goes over a spur of Gold Mountain, continuing along the side of the mountain, above Last Chance Basin, to the high pass above Snowslide Gulch. Once across the pass, it pitches down the other side via Quartz Gulch to the floor of Silver Bow Basin.