A Return to the Second Line of Works.
February 13, 1882, a flow of water was tapped on the 2,700 level of the Exchequer Mine, that flooded not only that mine, but also the Alpha, Imperial, Yellow Jacket, Kentuck, Crown Point, Belcher, Overman, Segregated Belcher, and Caledonia. The water rushed to the Yellow Jacket Shaft, where the pumping was done which drained the advanced workings (most eastern) of all the mines named. The Yellow Jacket folks pumped and bailed an average flow of 110 miners inches a day for seven days. Though they were raising 1,320 gallons every minute the water gained on them and raised to the level (2,700) on which it was tapped by the Exchequer. The water had then filled all the drifts, cross-cuts, and winzes of the whole group of mines from the Bullion south to the Caledonia. Pumping was still continued, for the purpose of exhausting the subterranean reservoir in the Exchequer, till March 28, when the water had been so far reduced that there was a depth of only 950 feet above the 3,000 level of the Yellow Jacket Shaft. Then, as no combined arrangement could be made among the several companies interested to continue the work and drain all the mines, the Yellow Jacket Company stopped pumping and shut down their works. This stopped all work below the level of the Sutro drain tunnel, and the works have never since been started up. Had all the companies “stood in” for a time longer all the flooded mines would have been thoroughly drained.
The cost of the new works on the advanced line had been so much, and the expense incurred in hoisting and pumping from such great depths was so heavy, that stockholders in all the mines along the lode now became discouraged. They declared that what had happened in the case of the Gold Hill group of mines was liable to happen in the other deep workings, and began to clamor for a general return to the works at the second line of shafts, where it was known that pay ore had been left behind in the race after depth. When stockholders found that the deep shafts did not at once cut into pay ore, when they tapped the vein, they had no patience to wait for much prospecting to be done. They demanded that paying deposits be sought for at once in the old levels above the Sutro Tunnel, where there could be no trouble from water. Thus it happens that along the whole lode all the mining now being done is at the works situated over the second line of shafts, and above the level of the Sutro Tunnel. These shafts are by no means shallow, as they range in depth from 2,000 to 2,900 feet. The return has been fortunate. The vein being from 400 to 1,000 and even in places 1,400 feet in width between walls, it was very little explored in the neighborhood of the works of the second line of shafts. When the bonanzas in sight were exhausted, the universal cry was: “Get away to the east! Strike the lode at greater depths! Another 1,000 feet of depth will give us a third fertile zone—a third line of bonanzas!” Now it is being discovered that large and rich deposits of ore had been left behind—that they are scattered in all directions in the great breadth of vein material like plums in a pudding. Again dividends are the order of the day along the famous old lode.