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69 t w o The Value of Ores Knowledge and Policy in Lode Mining Development DOI: 10.5876/9781607322351.c02 Montana is the richest mining country on the continent. It contains the silver of Nevada, with the gold of Colorado, with this important difference, that the mines of both classes are more extensive, and . . . far richer in Montana than in either of the localities mentioned. It is scarcely possible to conceive a finer field for legitimate speculation than this country now affords. Hon. R. C. Ewing, “Report on Montana Territory” (1865) Providence so ordains it that the superficial treasures of the earth designed to attract this enterprising class soon disappear, and a higher order of intelligence is required and a more permanent condition of things established. J. Ross Browne, Report on the Mineral Resources of the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains (1868) Next to the sailor, the miner has to withstand the most danger. The earth is against him, in holding with her rocky arm her treasures; so is the fire, which, in issuing forth from the depths of the mountain, is nourished by the air till it destroys in a blazing flame the timbering of the shaft; the water is his enemy in rushing from accidentally opened fissures, in roaring waves over his work, and so is the air, when it comes forth as firedamps , or choke-damps, destroying the inhabitants of the subterraneous realms. Adolph Ott, “On Mining” (1870) Lode or hard-rock mining marked the beginning of a kind of metal mining practice that had the look of an actual industry. It required a larger, more concentrated labor force; large, powerful machines; and large construction projects onsite. Hard-rock miners pursued gold and silver in underground tunnels, having blasted through solid rock in search of the treasure they hoped was embedded there. By its very nature, hard-rock mining required more brute force and sophisticated technologies than those used in placer gold mining; they were up against the energies of earth building. The rock could not the value of ores 70 be excavated with shovels, for example, but required picks and drills and even explosives . In addition, the metals had not been eroded out of their hard, rocky mineral veins like the placer deposits had, so hard-rock miners had to crush and sometimes burn and then crush the enriched metallic ores to break the metals free. For these reasons, the commitment to mine an underground mineral lode required patience and a willingness to commit time to development—the notorious “dead work” mining investors complained about. Hard-rock mining also consumed more energy and other natural resources and cost more money at the outset; it was more a middleclass than a poor man’s pursuit. Because hard-rock mining involved higher risks, required more intensive development , and pursued more uncertain ends, the absence of a federal mining policy left the western mineral lodes mostly unexplored until 1866. That year, as a result of concerted efforts by Nevada senator William Stewart, the US Congress passed the first mineral law in its history and promised to recognize “free mining” as a legitimate practice on all western public lands. Federal protection of what had been an elaborate and risky trespass onto public lands unleashed the pent-up energies that followed the end of the Civil War, and a hard-rock mining industry—at once wildly successful and wildly corrupt—began to grow around enriched ore lodes across the mountain west. The first hard-rock mining was done to extract the highly enriched silver ores in the Comstock Lode in western Nevada and, a little later, ores in and around Leadville, Colorado. In both places, placer gold mining had drawn a mining population that came to know the broader mineral landscape and uncovered what would turn out to be valuable ore lodes. While most hard-rock miners in the 1860s and 1870s pursued the gold quartz in lodes that had partially eroded into the placer creek deposits, the enriched silver-sulfide ore lodes in Nevada and silver-lead-sulfide ores in Colorado proved that ore lodes held the possibility of creating unprecedented mining fortunes. Success with the Comstock silver ores created the first generation of western-made mining capitalists, who reinvested their mining fortunes back into the exploitation of potential silver and gold mines throughout the mountain west. At the same time hard-rock mining burrowed deeper into the earth to extract ore and sent prospectors ranging the...

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