GOLD MINING—CRIPPLE CREEK, COLORADO
Denver is the chief active centre of finance of the mining industry in the western highlands, although many of the great enterprises derive the capital necessary to develop them from New York and San Francisco. Leadville, Cripple Creek, Butte, Helena, and Deadwood are regions of gold and silver production. Virginia City is the operating centre of the famous Comstock mines. At Anaconda is the chief copper-mine of this region. Salt Lake City and Ogden are the centre of the Mormon agricultural enterprises. Santa Fé, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque are centres of agricultural interests and stock-growing.
Spokane and Walla Walla are commercial centres of the plains of the Columbia River. The former is the focal point of a network of local roads that collect the wheat and other farm products of this region; the latter is the collecting point for much of the freight sent by steamboats down the Columbia River from Wallula. Railway transportation has largely superseded river-navigation for all except local freights, however. Boise City is the financial centre of considerable mining interests.
The Pacific Coast Lowlands.—Climatically this region differs from the rest of the United States in having a rainy and a dry season—that is, the rainfall is wholly seasonal. In the northern part the rainfall is sixty inches or more, and rain may be expected daily from the middle of October to May. In central California the precipitation is about half as much, the rainy season beginning later and ending earlier. In southern California there are occasional showers during the winter months, aggregating ten or twenty inches.
The level valley-lands have no superior for wheat-farming, and in but one or two places is the rainfall insufficient to insure a good crop. In the San Joaquin and southern valleys of California the harvest begins in May, in the Sacramento Valley in June, and in the Willamette and Sound Valleys of Oregon and Washington in July. The wheat goes mainly to Great Britain by way of Cape Horn. It cannot be safely shipped in bulk, and the manufacture of jute grain-sacks has become an important industry in consequence. The yearly wheat product of this region is not far from eighty million bushels.
Fruit is a valuable product of the foot-hills of the Sierras, and in southern California oranges, lemons, and grapes are now the staple crop. In some cases the average yield per acre has reached a value of five hundred dollars. Some of the largest vineyards in the world are in this region. The Zinfandel claret wine and the raisins find a market as far east as London, and considerable quantities are sold in China and Japan. The navel orange, although not native to California, reaches its finest development in that State. A large part of the fruit-crop of California is handled at Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. It is transported in special cars attached to fast trains.
Wool is an important crop. In the northern part the sheep thrive best in the foot-hills. The valley of Umpqua River, Ore., produces nearly seventeen million pounds of wool yearly, the staple being an ordinary variety. California produces nearly as much of the finest merino staple. A considerable part is manufactured in the mills of the Pacific coast. The Mission Mills blankets made in San Francisco are without an equal elsewhere.
The discovery of gold by John Marshall in 1848 resulted in a tremendous inflow of people to the gold-fields of California. It also was a factor in the acquisition of the territory composing the Pacific coast States. The first mining consisted merely in separating the metal deposited in the bed-rock of streams by washing away the lighter material. In time the quartz ledges which had produced the placer gold became the chief factor in gold mining. California is still one of the leading States in the production of gold. Quicksilver mining is an important feature of the mining interests of the Pacific coast, and the mines of the coast ranges produce about half the world's output.