enough to afford room for dumping. It is owned by Californians, who bought it for three hundred thousand dollars in 1887, and put in sixty thousand dollars’ worth of improvements. There are other valuable gravel mines at Sumpter and Deer Creek, besides man}’ yet to he developed. A railroad is being constructed from Baker City to Sumpter.
Quartz mining had not been profitably carried on formerly for several reasons, mainly the lack of capital and transportation. The first mine discovered and w T orked was the Virtue, near Baker City. This famous property comprises three thou sand feet on a strong vein from two to six feet wide. It has been prospected for one thousand feet to a depth of two hundred and fifty feet. The quartz is free milling costing only seven dollars and fifty cents, while the ore is worth forty dollars. It is estimated that it has yielded two million dollars.
Another valuable free-gold quartz mine is the Conner Creek Mine, on Conner Creek, in Baker County, three miles from Snake River. Although not a high-grade ore, it is so cheaply milled as to yield very large profits. It is partly owned in Portland, and partly in Baker County. The Gold Ridge Mine, four miles from Burnt River, is a similar property, which pays ten dollars per ton, but is now lying idle. It is owned in California.
The silver-mines of Baker County are the Green Discovery and the Monumental, thirty-five miles south of Baker City, in Rye Valley, the Mammoth, thirty miles west of Baker, and the Cabell, already referred to. The first named was found by Green, a prospector, in 1869. The Green vein was large, but only a few inches of it was pay-rock. The total production was twenty-five thousand dollars, but the expenses were twice that amount. The Monumental, belonging to the same company, and only a mile distant, was sold to a Boston firm for fifty-five thousand dollars, which brought the original company out about even. The Mammoth Mine has a vein twenty feet wide, of low- grade rock, in granite. About forty thousand dollars had been taken from this claim in 1888, from face-rock which paid twenty dollars per ton in gold. There are other locations on the same lode. Recent discoveries in the Greenhorn Mountain district are attracting much attention, and this is thought to be one of the richest silver-producing districts in the Northwest.
