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Jan 1, 1925

Jan 1, 1925

By Henry Otto

THE anthracite industry can be divided into two parts-the underground, or mining, and the outside, or preparation or manufacture. To understand recoveries in the two branches, some of the history of the industry and the changes that have taken place in the past century should be considered. It is a long step from 1807, when 55 tons were produced in the Wyoming field, to 1917, the peak year, when 80,841,223 tons were shipped to market from all the fields. In 1820, the Lehigh Coal Co., the predecessor of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co., shipped 365 tons in arks down the canal of the Lehigh Navigation Co. The Schuylkill field was not opened until 1822, when 1480 tons were shipped. The Wyoming field really became a producer in 1829, when 7000 tons were mined and shipped. It is well to note, at this time, the passing of the Coleraine colliery after a life of 88 years; in collieries of this age will be found the. romance of the region, as well as the history of the changes to date.

Jan 1, 1925

By Ulick R. Evans, Maurice Cook

The structural changes in metals brought about by annealing follow-ing a deformation at a low temperature has been the subject of many investigations. No less than eleven metals and alloys have been studied in some detail; namely, aluminum, tungsten,2 iron,3 copperI4 gold, zinc,6 cadmium, tin: lead: brass,1° and cupronickel. As a result, it is possible to frame a qualitative statement of the effect of the degree of deformation and the temperature of annealing on the structure finally attained.

Jan 1, 1925

By J. H. Hensley

The mine of the Miami Copper Co. is in the Miami district, Gila County, Ariz., approximately 7 miles west of Globe. In 1906, the General Development Co. secured the ground now owned by the Miami Copper Co., and about a year later discovered ore in a prospect shaft at a depth of 220 ft. The Miami Copper Co. was organized in 1907, the claims held by the General Development Co. were transferred to it, and an active development campaign was inaugurated. The railroad was extended from Globe to Miami in 1909, a concentrating plant was constructed, and the company began producing early in 1911. The unit size of mineral tract in the district is the standard lode claim 600 ft. in width by 1500 ft. in length. Ownerships of land are held in fee. The geology of the district has been described by F. L. Ransome.' The formations of local importance are: The pre-Cambrian Pinal schist, which consists mainly of metamorphosed sedimentary rocks and is commonly of a thinly laminated sericitic variety; the diabase, which is thought to have been intruded in late Paleozoic or early Mesozoic times; the Schultze granite and granite porphyry, considered early Tertiary; the dacite of late Tertiary time; and the Gila conglomerate of early Quaternary. General Items Influencing Mining Methods The bodies of disseminated ore in the district are flat lying masses of irregular outline and variable thickness. As a rule, these masses lack definite boundaries; the orebody follows a curve along one of the main ridges, approximately 5500 ft. in length with a maximum width of 1600 ft. The minerals occur as finely divided and uniformly disseminated chal-cocite in the Pinal schist and Schultze granite. The typical overburden or capping is a barren rusty brown, very friable, highly siliceous, leached schist, or granite-porphyry. The topography of the district is fairly rugged and irregular; the altitude ranges from 3400 ft. above sea level, at the town of Miami, to 3900 ft. on the hills above the Miami orebody. The climate is mild; the mean annual temperature is 63.°F.

Jan 1, 1925

Only the coal of the Sunnyside district in Carbon county is coked. Two companies, the Utah Fuel Company and the Columbia Steel Corporation, operating adjoining mines at Sunnyside and Columbia, produce coke. The Utah Fuel Company has 81 9 beehive coke ovens at Sunnyside. Only 350 ovens are being operated at the present time, largely because the smelters which had been using Sunnyside coke changed their equipment from blast furnaces to reverberatory furnaces

Jan 1, 1925

"WELFARE…Welfare endeavor in connection with both the metal and the coal mines of Utah has shown gratifying progress during recent years and both the operators and their employees are deserving of much credit for the efforts put forth to better living, working, educational and receational conditions in most of the mining camps of the state.In the older metal mining camps of Utah, where the towns are incorporated and independent of the mining properties operating in the vicinity, less opportunity is pre¬sented for the companies to exercise efforts looking towards improved welfare conditions than is the case of camps located on company ground and under the full control of operators.Even in such camps, however, as illustrated in Bingham, the companies can do much to better welfare conditions. In this camp the Utah Copper Company has spent $800,000 since 1 920 in the erection of modern brick cottages, apartment houses and the Gemmell Memorial Club. The cottages and apartments have every convenience to be found in up-to-date city homes. The Gemmell Memorial Club, erected and equipped at a cost of $1 75,000, was provided by the company for the benefit of the Utah Copper Company employees living in the canyon and has been made the recreational center for the camp."

Jan 1, 1925

"The building stone industry of Utah has developed slowly on account of the limited market offered. The state has large and varied deposits of granite, limestones, marble and onyx.Three cement companies manufacture Portland cement in the Salt Lake valley. Brick clay, fire clay and clay for sewer pipe is found in the vicinity of Salt Lake City and Ogden.Large deposits of gypsum have been found in several localities in Utah. The gypsum deposit near Nephi has been developed to be one of the most important plaster producers in the western country. This gypsum occurs in large quantities and is exceptionally pure.Oil and Oil ShaleVast deposits of rich oil shale occur in the Green River formation of the Tertiary rocks in the Uintah Basin, northeastern Utah. It is estimated by the United States Geological Survey that the basin contains at least 92,159,000,000 tons of shale which will yield as much as 15 gallons of oil to the ton when distilled. These shale deposits indicate that ultimately Utah will be one of the leading shale oil producing states of the country. Some development work and considerable experimental work has been done, but overproduction of petroleum and general low prices afforded little incentive to the oil-shale operator, consequently no commercial production has yet been established in Utah."

Jan 1, 1925

By Homer G. Turner

Coals, other than anthracite, have been so thoroughly studied under the microscope during recent years, that we now know what kinds of plants and what parts of plants form the bulk of lower rank coals from peat to bituminous coal. The microscope has also shown the state of preservation of such vegetation as well as the nature and distribution of products of plant decay. These and further details have been ascertained mainly through the employment of two methods of attack, section cutting and maceration. Anthracite has failed to respond to these methods, so well adapted to the study of lower rank coals and, therefore, has been neglected by investigators to such an extent that there is much doubt as to its microscopical characteristics. The object of this paper is to lift anthracite from its realm of obscurity by demonstrating the wealth of microscopical detail that is revealed when reflected light is used on a properly polished and etched surface and, further, to show the relationship between anthracite and bituminous coal. Technique The method adopted in this investigation is similar to that described in an earlier paper.' Because of slight modifications recently made, the process is again described. It consists, briefly, of etching a polished surface of coal with heat. Although pieces of various sizes and shapes are used, blocks of coal about 2 or 3 cm. square take the most uniform polish and are large enough to be handled with ease. Larger pieces can be used if one has the equipment for polishing them and they rnay be desirable when one wishes to study some particular form that extends for some distance through the coal. Large surfaces, however, require greater care in polishing and etching; for this reason, they are not recommended for ordinary work.

Jan 1, 1925

By means of top-slicing methods, wide veins, masses, or thick beds of soft ore may be mined, where the caving of the overburden is of no consequence. The ore is mined in a series of horizontal floors or slices, taken in descending order, from the top of the deposit. Each floor is mined in small sections, the roof of each section being allowed or forced to cave before an adjacent section is attacked. The method as used in two mining districts—Marquette, iron, and Pachuca, silver-gold—is described in the two papers following:

Jan 1, 1925

By Clarence P. Linville

A previous article1 by the authors contained a general description of the new roasting furnace herein described but it did not go into detail as to the metallurgical behavior or the results obtained. Believing that such information would be of great value, they have elaborated on the subject and have given many unpublished details. The furnace described applies the principle of roasting finely divided zinc-sulfide ores, now produced in large quantity by the flotation process, in gaseous suspension; that is, the ore particles are carried, in suspension, in a current of air and gaseous products of the roast. The relatively great fineness of flotation concentrate presents difficulties and problems of roasting in furnaces of the ordinary type; the fine ore is forwarded through the furnace in the form of a shallow bed and its very fineness leads to dense impervious bedding which prevents oxygen from reaching the interior of the bed, thus unduly lengthening the time of roasting and preventing the elimination of the last of the sulfur. The fineness of the concentrate, normally, should lead to a rapid and complete roast, for the speed of roasting is a function of the surface exposed to oxygen, which surface is greatest, per unit of weight, in very fine material. The difficulty in bed roasting is to get the oxygen to the particle. If the fine ore, during the roasting, could be freely suspended in oxidizing gases, full advantage could be taken of the great surface conferred by its fineness. This fundamental idea, of course, is not new, for the Stedtefelt furnace, familiar to the older metallurgists, is an example of it; but the manner in which this is accomplished may be new. The numerous efforts to roast in gaseous suspension show that the idea is attractive; in fact, an analysis would indicate that it is the most reason-

Jan 1, 1925

With a total value to date of well over $200,000.000.00 for its ore production, the Tintic mining district, which is about 100 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, ranks as one of the three main ore producing areas of Utah. In it are located the biggest silver mines of the country, silver having been the chief metal produced in the camp since its start. Tintic's silver production to date has a total value of over $1 00,000,000, approximately half of the value of the camp's ore production, the balance being roughly divided among lead, gold and copper. Discovery of the camp was made in the late sixties. Lack of transportation and ore reduction facilities delayed extensive development of the area for nearly a decade. In recent years Tintic's ore production has ranged from 350,000 to 400,000 tons annually. In 1924 the camp produced one-eighth of the silver produced in the nation with an output of 7,729,700 ounces. Its lead production was 77,765,000 pounds and its gold production 26,285 ounces.

Jan 1, 1925

By Dever C. Ashmead

Coal companies in the anthracite region are studying various methods of mining, seeking one that will shorten considerably the life of the gangway and thus decrease the maintenance charges. In steep pitching measures, the maintenance charges of the gangways are high because of the cost of replacing timbers and cleaning up falls. Therefore, if the length of the gangways can be decreased and the mining made more concentrated, the life of the coal gangways will be decreased and the maintenance charges per ton of coal produced will be smaller. The practice in the anthracite region is to drive long coal gangways and to work the breasts as the gangway from which they were driven is advanced. In many cases these gangways are from 4000 to 6000 ft. in length; and some are even longer. As these must be maintained not only until they have reached their limit but until second mining begins (which may be some years later), the maintenance charges are high. If the gangway is allowed to close, when the time comes to remove the pillars the cost of re-opening it may be as expensive as the original driving cost. The Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Co., at its Wanamie Colliery at Wanamie, Pa., has been using a system of mining that, as far as the writer knows, is not used in any other place in the anthracite fields. The

Jan 1, 1925

By J. S. Miller

This paper describes the method of mining a steeply pitching anthracite seam on a heavy pitch in the Orchard vein in No. 1 Tunnel of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co. The Orchard vein in the Neaquehoning district has a thickness of about 15 ft. on the level of the gangway, which is sufficient thickness for the gangway to be driven full width in coal. Above the gangway, the vein becomes thinner and near the surface is about 8 it. thick. The coal is of good hard quality and carries a fairly good roof. The pitch of the vein is between 65" and 70". Usually the breast-and-pillar method has been employed in the mining of the steeply pitching veins in this section. This method produced good results as far as the mining of the breast was concerned but the recovery of the pillar was difficult as to full extraction and expensive as regards costs. To recover these pillars after the breasts were driven, three methods were commonly employed; they were known as the pillar-breast method, pillar-skipping method, and pillar-chute method. The pillar-breast method consisted in putting a battery in one corner of the pillar (Fig. I), coupling the manways A and B of the two adjacent breasts for two or three lengths ahead of the working face of the pillar being cut, and working the pillar as a breast. This method was used by the more skilled miners of the earlier days but has practically been abandoned. A slight variation of this method is used to some extent. In this case, the pillars are left wider than ordinarily and of sufficient width for the full-width breast to be driven in and a small pillar left on each side of the pillar breast between it and the regular breasts. With the completion of the "pillar breast," the ribs are drilled full of holes, loaded, and fired. In the pillar-skipping method (Fig. 2), the middle breast of three is not driven through and is drawn empty while the outside and inside breasts are kept full. At the corners of the two pillars standing, batteries are put in and a skip of the two pillars started; the coal in the two pillars is blasted over into the empty breast. A small pillar is kept along the

Jan 1, 1925

"Mining as an industry of Utah had its inception in the activities of United States soldiers who came to the Salt Lake valley under the command of Gen. P. E. Connor, founder of Fort Douglas, in October, 1862. Many of these soldiers were from California and naturally employed their spare time in the search for minerals. Although their military status did not permit them to make locations in their own names, they assiduously prospected the region in accordance with their own knowledge and with information conveyed to them by Indians and others. Their efforts were encouraged by their commander, who thereby fairly earned the title of father of the industry here, and by their other officers, and many discoveries that subsequently proved of great value were made by the soldiers.No systematic prospecting or mining had been done in the Territory previously, although early Mormon settlers in the southern portion had mined a little ore from time to time in order to provide supplies of lead for bullets. The Mormon leaders at that time did not encourage mining. They held that agriculture was more important and profitable for their followers.Coal was discovered and produced in 1850. Iron was discovered in 1850 and the first iron plant was in operation in 1852 in Iron County. The first non-ferrous metal production was in 1854, in Beaver County, when Isaac Grundy treated ore from the Rollins mine in what is said to have been the first lead furnace west of the Rocky Mountains. The first mineral location was the West Jordan claim in Bingham canyon, located September 17, 1863, now owned by the United States Smelting, Refining & Mining Co., and still productive. The first district organized in the state was the West Mountain (Bingham), December I 7, 1863. Other important districts of early organization are: Little Cottonwood, December 20, 1869; Big Cottonwood, July 11, 1870; American Fork, July 21, 1870; Uintah (Park City), July 8, 1871; Tintic, December 13, 1896; Ophir, August 6, 1870. The first silver-lead smelting was by J. W. Gibson at Stockton in 1866. Lieut. James Finnerty had previously erected two small trial furnaces there, but made no quantity production."

Jan 1, 1925

By Rudolph Emmel

THE mines operated by the South American Development Co. are located in the Zaruma mining district of southwestern Ecuador. They are near the old mining town of Zaruma, which is the only important city in the canton of the same name. The district is situated in the upper end of a valley lying between two spurs of the Cordillera, one of which may be considered the Coast Range and the other an intermediate range. The mining camp proper, known as Portovelo, and the plant are 2.4 km. south of Zaruma, on the north bank of the Amarillo River, a tributary of the Tumbes River, which flows southwestward through Peru to the Pacific. Portovelo is difficult of access; it is reached from Guayaquil by means of river steamers and muleback. Embarking at Guayaquil, the route is down the Guayas River, across the Jambeli Canal, and up the Santa Rosa River to Santa Rosa, a distance of 177 km. From Santa Rosa, the road or trail follows the Santa Rosa River, then across the summit of the Coast Range into Portovelo, a distance of 74 km.-a two-day trip on muleback. The mining property of the South American Development Co. comprises 297 lode claims and 142 placer claims. The combined lode claims cover an area, roughly rectangular in shape, 9000 m. long from north to south by 4000 m. wide; the northern edge of the rectangle is about 3000 m. north of the central plaza of Zaruma. Mineral lands in Ecuador are held by virtue of an annual tax per claim paid to the central government, no surface rights being included.

Jan 1, 1925

The mining fraternity of North America was grieved and shocked to learn of the death of Dr. Willet G. Miller on Feb. 10, 1925. Doctor Miller was for many years the Provincial Geologist of Ontario and the one who more than any other had contributed by his personal work and the reports of his subordinates to the recent extraordinary mineral development of the Province. Doctor Miller was fifty-eight at the time of his decease. A man of unusually stalwart physique, he seemed destined to many years of useful service. His friends in both the American and Canadian Mining Institutes can with difficulty reconcile themselves to his loss. Doctor Miller was born in 1867 in Port Rowan, Ont., on the shores of Lake Erie. After preparation in the high school of his native town, he entered the University of Toronto and took his bachelor's degree in 1890. He pursued graduate studies in geology at Chicago, Harvard, and Heidelberg Universities. In 1893, he was first appointed lecturer and soon thereafter Professor of Geology in Queens University, Kingston, Ont., a chair which he held until 1902. He was then appointed Provincial Geologist of Ontario and was placed at the head of the Survey which was attached to the Department of Mines. Within the next year, 1903, he performed the service that made him famous. In the summer of 1903, in connection with the building of the Ontario Government Railway toward an objective on James Bay, veins had been noticed by construction parties just north of what is Cobalt Lake today, and in the rocky pass that is now traversed by the main line of the Canadian National Railway en route to Vancouver. The pink stain of cobalt bloom on the vein, known later as La Rose, caught the eye of a workman; in November, Doctor Miller recognized the silver in it, and brought the possibilities of the district to general attention. In December, he published an article in the Engineering and Mining Journal, stating that the veins could be worked at a handsome profit. During the winter and spring, the mining interest awoke, which resulted in the astonishingly productive silver district of Cobalt; but in which, Doctor Miller, because a government official, scrupulously refrained from having any financial interest whatever. Seldom has so high a sense of honor been manifested; and as the result, Doctor Miller commanded confidence and respect to an extraordinary degree. Hard on the discoveries at Cobalt came, in the next few years, those at the other famous camps in Northern Ontario; and step by step with them, reports issued from

Jan 1, 1925

By J. F. Wolff

The iron formation of the Iron River, Crystal Falls, and Florence districts probably is not of one geologic age only but of at least two ages. The ores, therefore, are of different characteristics. But in general the geologic conditions that occasioned the development of the orebodies have been essentially the same throughout the district and the types and structures of the orebodies are very similar in different parts of the area. In general, the iron formation of this area has been folded into a series of close pitching synclines and anticlines; minor folds of many orders are included in the major folds. The pitching synclines have been particularly favorable places for the circulation of ground waters, which in such troughs have developed orebodies through the familiar process of leaching out the silica in the iron formation, oxidizing and concentrating ferrous iron compounds in the rocks. The iron formation of this area is interbedded with and has interbedded in it certain slate or slaty layers that, in addition to the foot wall of the iron formation proper, act as impervious layers in the pitching troughs, to direct and control the flow of underground waters. In most places, the entire iron formation in a structural trough is not altered into iron ore; the orebody may be lens-shaped and exhibit no folding in its layers, outline, or shape, but almost without exception such bodies have been developed in folds and because of the influence of folds, and structurally they occupy only one limb of a fold. Many orebodies occupy the entire trough of a minor fold and the structure of the fold can be traced throughout the orebody. Many definitely recognizable horizon markers in or associated with the iron formation occur in this district and serve as valuable guides to the engineer or geologist in exploring an orebody whether by drilling or underground mining development. Among such markers are the talc schist (an altered dolomite) and the Traders slate at the base of old Menominee iron formation proper, and the interbedded Brier slates and overlying Hanbury dates; and certain graphitic slates and gray-wackel in the Iron River and Crystal Falls area.

Jan 1, 1925

Mining as an industry of Utah had its inception in the activities of United States soldiers who came to the Salt Lake valley under the command of Gen. P. E. Connor, founder of Fort Douglas, in October, 1862. Many of these soldiers were from California and naturally employed their spare time in the search for minerals. Although their military status did not permit them to make locations in their own names, they assiduously prospected the region in accordance with their own knowledge and with in- formation conveyed to them by Indians and others. Their efforts were encouraged by their commander, who thereby fairly earned the title of father of the industry here, and by their other officers, and many discoveries that subsequently proved of great value were made by the soldiers. No systematic prospecting or mining had been done in the Territory previously although early Mormon settlers in the southern portion had mined a little ore from time to time in order to provide supplies of lead for bullets. The Mormon leaders at that time did not encourage mining. They held that agriculture was more important and profitable for their followers.

Jan 1, 1925

Jan 1, 1925