nies have not been able to realize dividends. Of their actual condition a view will be given in another place. With the close of the war, and the consequent return of the enterprise of the country to its natural channels; with peace on the Plains, good crops, cheap freights, and general low prices, including wages; and especially with an improved treatment for the ores in connection with recent silver discoveries, a considerable degree of prosperity and improvement may not unreasonably be looked for in the immediate future. With the advent of a railroad from the States, which will have been finished to near Denver during the coming Summer, and the introduction of a metallurgical treatment that shall extract all the value from the ores, the success of Colorado mining will doubtless surpass the utmost that even enthusiasts have dared to hope.

But in stating why the companies of 1864 have not realized dividends, we have really given the history of the past two years-1864-5-and indeed of 1866 to a great extent, and perhaps we may here as appropriately as anywhere close this chapter.

CHAPTER VII.

Gilpin County-Present Condition of the Improved Lodes-Names of Mining Companies-Amount of Development-Condition of Mines and Mills-Machinery-Processes, &c.

Gilpin is the smallest as it is the richest county of Colorado. It embraces North Clear Creek and its tributary gulches,* Gregory, with its feeders, Eureka, Nevada, and Spring; Russell, with its branches, Lake, Willis, Elkhorn, Missouri Flats, Illinois, Leavenworth, Sawpit, Graham, Davenport; Chase, widening soon into Quartz Valley, again narrowing and called, Peck; and Missouri, the latter the only one of the group which is not of the group, coming, as it does, from the ridge that divides North Clear from South Boulder Creek, while the others come from the one that divides North from South Clear Creek. North Clear Creek is not far from twenty miles in length, and is formed by the natural intersection of half a dozen little brooks, which used to constitute what was called TwelveMile Diggings. It is a roaring torrent when the

* Gulch is the distinctive appellation among miners of those tributaries of the creeks which convey into them the melting snows, but for the greater part of the year, are dry. Where they are washed for gold, water has to be brought to them in canals for that purpose.

snows are melting and running out, and for about three months of each year, furnishes unlimited water-power; carrying in the Winter, however, no more than two hundred inches. Its course is southeastward and it empties into South Clear Creek fourteen miles above Golden City, so that it and all that is connected with it, are well within the Foothills.

About half way from its mouth to its source, Gregory Gulch comes down to it from the west, flanked at slight distance by Russell on the south and Chase on the north. We say comes down, for in the course of two miles it falls more than a thousand feet. At its head is the town of Nevada; half way down, marking the confluence of Eureka and Spring Gulches, is Central City, the county seat and the metropolis of the mines; at its mouth, Black Hawk, noted for its quartz mills, crowds the assembled hills. These towns are all one in reality, being joined together by nearly continuously builtup main gulch streets. Central City and Black Hawk each sustain separate municipal governments, however. The population of the county is nearly ten thousand, and is mostly confined to Gregory and Nevada, Spring and Eureka Gulches— the first two the same gulch under different names.

The bordering and wedging hills were densely wooded when the mines were discovered, but the trees were small, and few now remain within five or six miles around. This, with the pock-marks made by prospectors on every hill-side, and the fierceness and thoroughness with which the gulches

SUBSTITUTES FOR WOOD FUEL.

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have been turned inside out, gives the country about Central anything but an inviting look. Water was early brought here from Fall River, a stream west of, parallel with, and rising higher in the Range than North Clear Creek, in what is called the Consolidated Ditch, which delivered on Quartz Hill, between Nevada and Russell Gulches, one hundred and fifty inches of water. This was to run the toms and sluices in the gulches. The mills have generally used steam power from the first. The rapid consumption of the wood within reach has already caused search for a substitute. There are two ways of meeting the wants of the future in this respect. Hydraulic may in great measure be substituted for steam power by the construction of a reservoir at the head of Fall River-which locality almost seems to have been made for such purpose so well adapted is it—and the requisite enlargement of the Consolidated Ditch. Upon full and careful examination of the ground, it has been estimated that the expenditure of $100,000 would bring enough water to the top of Quartz Hill, so that, by dividing it into three channels thence to Black Hawk, it would pass over all the principal lodes, giving 120 powers of 33 1-3 feet head and 300 cubic inches volume, equal to forty horses, and from Black Hawk to the mouth of North Clear Creek, thirty more of the same head and greater volume! This canal to be covered and a railway laid on it, so as to make the large tract of woodland between Central City and the Range tributary to the mines. The reservoir would be filled every

Spring while the snows are melting and there is an inmeasurable surplus of water, thus not robbing the lower Fall River country of its natural stream. Then, if mining should become a separate branch of business from the treatment of the ores, as it no doubt ought and will, these powers to be used for hoisting, crushing, and dressing, the ore to be taken to the coal-beds at the base of the Mountains for treatment, or the coal to be brought up, either of which would nearly dispense with the use of woodfuel. But it would necessitate the construction of a railway from Black Hawk via Clear Creek Kanyon to Golden City. A careful survey has demonstrated the entire practicability of this project, the grade, with three tunnels-aggregate length, 3000 feet-averaging about 100 feet per mile for the distance, twenty-one miles. In view of the benefits that would result from their completion, these great enterprises are the most feasible of any we know of. The prospect is that the consumption of fuel will go on increasing until there will be no escape from one or the other or both of them.

Tum

It is within a radius of one and a half miles from Central City that all the lodes and improvements mentioned hereafter in this chapter, occur. bled headlong into so small a compass are Bobtail, Bates, Gregory, Mammoth, Quartz, Casto, and Gold Hills, with their complicated net-work of rich veins, to say nothing of as many more with no special names. The outlying districts of the county, and there are some, must be consigned to a separate chapter. For precise information with regard to