A History of the Comstock Silver Lode & Mines / Nevada and the Great Basin Region; Lake Tahoe and the High Sierras

by Dan De Quille

River and Canyon Mills.

The Mexican Mill, on the Carson River, contains forty-four stamps and a corresponding number of pans, settlers, and other amalgamating machinery. The Morgan Mill has forty stamps. It works ore from the Consolidated California and Virginia Mine. The Brunswick Mill contains seventy-six stamps, the Vivian sixteen, Santiago thirty-eight, and Eureka sixty. All these mills are about and below Empire City, and all work Comstock ores. The Eureka Mill is run on ore from the Consolidated California and Virginia. The Rock Point Mill (thirty stamps), at Dayton, and the Douglas Mill (ten stamps), in Lower Gold Hill, also work Comstock ores.

At and about Silver City are two or three small mills that work the ores of mines in that neighborhood, and on the Carson River are the Douglas and Woodworth Mills, which work tailings.

On Six-mile Canyon, below Virginia City to the east, are several small water mills having an aggregate of about thirty stamps. These work ores from the mines on the canyon and in Flowery District. On the canyon are also one or two small mills that work tailings and the concentrations from blanket sluices.

The Alta Mining Company has a ten-stamp mill, with concentrators, immediately adjoining the hoisting works at their mine. The Justice Company have a new ten-stamp mill near their mine.

Owing to the fact that many mines are now at the same time producing large quantities of ore, a lack of milling facilities is being felt. To meet this demand the Nevada Mill has been enlarged one-third, and the capacity of other mills will be increased, and perhaps some new mills will be erected. Processes by means of which low-grade ores may be profitably worked will no doubt yet be invented or discovered, which will cause many new works to be erected either on the Carson River or in the neighborhood of the mines producing large quantities of such ores.

THE COMSTOCK LODE.

Hoisting Works, Shafts, and Mining, Past and Present.

The Comstock Lode crops out along the eastern face of Mount Davidson about 1,200 feet below the summit, and just above the western suburbs of Virginia City. To the northward and southward the vein runs along the east side of other and smaller mountains of the same range. The face of Mount Davidson slopes to the east at an angle of about twenty-five degrees, and the vein dips in the same direction at an average inclination of forty-five degrees. It was at first supposed that the vein dipped to the west (into Mount Davidson), and the first hoisting works were erected on or near the croppings, where shafts were sunk and inclines sent down. For the first 400 to 500 feet the vein did pitch to the west into the mountain. Mount Davidson was then supposed to be the great central magazine, or nucleus, of all the silver found near the surface, and claims located on the slope of the mountain below to the eastward found but little favor in the eyes of mining men and would-be purchasers. Suddenly all this was changed, and there was a general “right-about-face.” It was discovered in the Gould & Curry and the Ophir Mines that at a certain depth the lode became perpendicular, then turned and took a regular dip to the east, of about forty-five degrees, following as a footwall the syenite slope of Mount Davidson. It was then seen that the false dip above was caused by the top of the vein being bent over under the pressure of sliding material on the slope of the mountain at and near the surface.