own, for
chlorinating and leaching gold and silver ores. A roasting furnace for desulphurizing concentrations, a two-stamp mill for
working test lots, an assay-office, and other conveniences are
also to be found in the Pine Creek, or, as it is named, Granite
district.
On the stage-road from Baker City to Pine Creek are the Sparta, Eagle, and Hog ’Em districts. The first of these is old placer mining ground, which formerly yielded thirty-five thousand dollars per annum. A gold quartz mine, for which a Salt Lake company paid fifty thousand dollars, is located in the latter district. There is a ten-stamp mill here, and a mill at Sparta. A Salmon pulverizer and an arastra furnish crushing power to the mines hereabouts.
It will be readily seen from the foregoing that quartz mining is in its infancy in Oregon, yet that its mineral resources are considerable. Just what amount of gold and silver is produced cannot be shown, owing to the fact that ores are often milled or smelted away from the producing locality, and the results coined in the several mints of the United States, where the locale of the precious metals is not always known. Perhaps an average of half a million of gold is obtained from the mines of this State annually. The silver-production is much less, this metal never being found in placers, and requiring mills and smelters to dislodge it from its matrix.
The mineral belt of East Oregon is but a continuation of the Idaho metal-bearing mountains, as, for instance, the Seven Devils country, north of the Weiser River, and directly east of Union County. This region has an elevation little above that of the Pine Mountains, and derives its Satanic appellation from a group of seven peaks which overshadow one of the greatest copper- mines in the world. This district covers a scope of country fifteen by twenty-four miles, and contains vertical veins from thirty to one hundred and fifty feet wide and thousands of feet deep.
This district was discovered twenty-five years ago by one Levi Allen, who located the Old Peacock, the phenomenal surface mine of the world. He held it by doing one hundred dollars’ worth of work on it annually until 1888, when he was forced to take in Montana parties, who now own thirteen-sixt
