Snoqualmie ore is the gangue-rock, and experiments are being made at eastern iron-works with good results.
In the Skagit Valley, near Cedro, is Iron Mountain, separated from Connor Mountain, in which are found coal deposits, only by a deep gorge. In this mountain are ten distinct veins varying in thickness from twelve to seventy-five feet, and in a favorable position for tunnelling. The ore occurs in pre-cretaceous crystalline rocks, in which limestone also occurs, and proof of its true bearing and great magnitude is found in the drift and ancient volcanic rock associated with it. The iron is of a rich black color, of strong polarity and even fracture, surpassing in purity and merit the Lake Superior ores occurring in the same geological formation. Some of the ledges contain a high percentage of manganese, which it is believed with proper treatment will make it valuable for the manufacture of steel. A practical working test of the ore in the Irondale smelting works resulted in obtaining sixty per cent, of pure iron.
The only iron-mine in Washington actually developed is in Chimacum Valley, two and a half miles from the Irondale furnace on Port Townsend Bay. The ore in this case lies in a blanket from ten to twenty inches in thickness immediately under the sod of the valley, is porous, but sufficiently solid to be dug in lumps. The analysis gives:
Metallic iron.41.83 percent.
Phosphorus. 0.751 "
Phosphorus in 100 parts iron. 1.795 "
In 1880 the Puget Sound Iron Company, Cyrus Walker, president, erected a furnace for smelting iron near Port Townsend, calling the place Irondale, and commenced work in January, 1881, the first iron made in Washington being turned out on the 23d of that month. The ore used was obtained from the dairy farm of William Bishop, at Chimacum, and from Texeda Island in the Fuca Sea. There is ore enough in the Chimacum Mine to keep a forty-ton furnace running for twenty years, but it requires mixing with another quality of ore. The Texeda Mine is a fissure vein, eighty feet wide, bearing sixty-two per cent, of metal of excellent quality and inexhaustible in quantity, although the ore requires to be desulphurized by roasting. It
