fog and mist, and a damp cold night set in where the morning had
been so bright and warm.
A week was scant time to see and enjoy San Francisco, but the
mines of Utah were fast rising into importance, and demanded a
historian; my old friends called for me, and I regretfully left the
Pacific coast for the very unpacific Territory.
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CHAPTER XI.
UTAH ARGENTIFERA.
The Gentiles were all talking of silver mines; the Mormons of
"persecution of the Saints" and "God's wrath at the wicked Gentile
government." Chief-Justice McKean had ruled all the Mormon offi-
cials out of the District Court, and made the United States Marshal
the ministerial officer; the latter had selected non-Mormon grand
juries who were ferreting out all the crimes committed by the Saints
in the old " blood-atonement era." Lawsuits as to mining titles
doubled and redoubled. The District Court at Salt Lake City, which
formerly finished the term in two weeks, now sat ten months in the
year; one-half its time settling titles to mines, the other half trying
Mormon criminals. Five indictments were pending against Brighani
Young; a hundred Latter-day Saints were under arrest, or hiding in
the mountains. Money by tens of thousands was pouring in to pur-
chase silver lodes; every body swore by the Emma Mine which had
given the Territory such a reputation. Every miner expected a for-
tune; many Gentiles looked forward to the early overthrow of Brig-
ham. There was no little bird to whisper "Schenck — Stewart —
Trainor Park — Baron Grant," or hint that before twelve months the
Supreme Court would upset the Utah Judiciary. There were visions
of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, of monstrous lodes of silver
ore, of a Territory redeemed ; the Gentile speculator rode on the crest
of a swelling wave, and smiling hope beckoned him on to greater
ventures.
Though Judge McKean was then the central figure, the other Fed-
eral officials came in for an equal share of Mormon abuse. No matter
what they had done or left undone, they were guilty on the main
point: they recognized no sovereignty in Brigham Young; they loved
republicanism and hated theocracy. Governor Geo. L. Woods es-
pecia.lly came in for unstinted abuse. His conduct in suppressing the
Mormon militia was painted in frightful colors. History and Script-
ure were ransacked for precedents. The fruitful annals of Israel
furnished the Mormon preachers with abundant similes: He was a
Broman governor, oppressing the Holy Land ; an Amalekite, hindering
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UTAH ARQENTIFERA. 166
the march of Israel ; he was Pharaoh, enslaving God's chosen ; he was
Herod, thirsting for innocent blood; he was Pilate, crucifying the
Lord afresh. Daniel and Revelations were reopened : the Govern-
ment was like haughty Babylon rushing on to destruction ; war was
soon to scourge America ; all our cities w^re to be desolated, and
Washington in particular was to be sown with salt and rooted up by
swine ! The Gentiles were equally
fierce in their zeal to prove Utah's
mineral wealth ; religious fanaticism
and the love of gain were playing a
strange drama in the shadow of the
Wasatch.
It was the dryest and sickliest
season I ever knew in that Terri-
tory. The Great Salt Lake, which
had risen year by year till it stood _ __
AA /• 1 . 1 1 1 /» ■'"'5 MORMON MILITIA.
ntteen teet higher than when first
surveyed, had suddenly fiillen far below the water-marks set up by
Captain Stansbury in 1849. On the north and east the bordering
marshes were dry, their basins shining with salt. The pleasant babble
of the water-seeks along the city streets was not heard ; the channels
were dry, and full of dust and refuse. What little water City Creek
supplied was needed for irrigating the inner lots, and every-where on
the streets the shade-trees had a strange, half-dead look, the leaves
curled and withering. When I arrived from California, September
Ist, fifty-five persons had died in three weeks out of a population of
fourteen thousand. Two-thirds of the people complained of the
malaria. No such season had been known in Salt Lake since the
notable " fiimine year." So I soon took stage for the hills, and for
three months devoted most of my time to inspecting the mines.
Sixteen miles across the valley and over the " bench," brought us
to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Cafion ; while a storm swept over
US and tipped the summits of the Wasatch with snow. In these en-
closed basins clouds rise from the lakes and marshes and float away,
without shedding their moisture, to the mountains; there they are
checked and fall in rain, causing the mountain sides in places to be
covered with timber, while the valleys are always bare. A damp,
numbing wind swept down the caflon, growing colder as we gained in
height, till overcoats and gloves failed to secure warmth ; while above
and around us every-where the peaks glistened with snow, seeming by
imagination to add to the cold, and by the middle of the afternoon we
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166 WESTERN WILDS.
saw the trees on the slopes gray-white with rime^ and knew that i^e
had invaded the domain of winter.
For two days the storm continued, and then the late mild autumn
of the mountains set in. In summer and autumn the Cottonwood dis-
trict is the most delightful of cool retreats ; in winter a lofty snow-
bank, with here and there a gray projection. In the winter sunshine
it would, but for the occasional patches of timber, present a painfully-
dazzling expanse of white; and as it is, serious snow-blindness is not
uncommon. When a warm south wind blows for a day or two, there
is greater danger of snow-slides. In January, 1875, the snow fell
there, without intermission, for eight days, filling the deepest gulches,
into which the few stray animals plunged and floundered helplessly.
In the circular mountain-hollows, with a good growth of timber, the
snow drifted from ten to forty feet deep, leaving the largest trees
looking like mere shrubs. Distant settlements were quite isolated,
and the narrow passes thereto stopped by snow. However, in the-
best developed mines work went oh under ground, all the side
chambers and vacant places being stacked ftill of ore as fast as it
was mined. In a few more days the sun came out bright and clc^ar,
and though the thermometer rarely rises above the freezing point
during the first two months of the year in the higher camps, yet the
warmth seems to have been sufficient to loosen the snow not yet
tightly packed; and in every place where the slope was great and
the timber not sufficient to bind it, avalanches of from one to a hun-
dred acres came thundering into the cafions, sweeping all before them.
One of the largest swept off that part of Alta City, Little Cottonwood,
lying on the slope. Six persons were killed outright, either crushed
by the timber of their own cabins or smothered in the snow, and
many more were buried five or six hours, until relief parties dug them
out. One woman was found sitting upright in her cabin with a babe
in her arms, both dead. The cabin had withstood the avalanche, but
the snow poured In at the doors and windows, and they were frozen
or smothered. Thirty-five lives were-lost in Utah that winter by
snow-slides. Six men were buried in one gulch a thousand feet under
packed ice and snow. Search for them was useless. But at length
the breath of June dissolved their snowy prison, and the bodies were
revealed, fresh and fair, as if they had just ceased to breathe.
Alta City, the metropolis of Little Cottonwood, is at the center
of an amphitheater, the ridges rising one or two thousand feet high
on all sides, except the narrow opening down the cafion. In this
circuit is a mining population of twelve or fifteen hundred people.
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UTAH ARQENTIFERA, 167
and most of the old and noted mines of Utah — The Emma^ Flag-
staff, Davenport, South Star, Titus, and a dozen others. The ore
carries from $100 to $200 per ton in silver, and from thirty to sixty
per cent, in lead. Thus the base bullion produced from this ore
is from ninety-six to ninety-nine per cent, lead, and is shipped
eastward for separation. The old question, " Which is the heavier,
a pound of wool or a pound of gold?^' has its correct application
among miners; for gold and silver are estimated by Troy weight,
wool (and lead) by Avoirdupois. This distinction is preserved even
when lead and silver are in the same ton of base bullion. Hence
a pound of wool is heavier than a pound of gold or silver, though
an ounce of either metal is heavier than an ounce of wool !
North of Little Cottonwood, and also opening westward upon
Jordan Valley, is the cafion of Big Cottonwood, with a similar class
of mines. Far up the cafion is Big Cottonwood Lake, in the center
of a beautiful oval vale, where the Saints usually celebrate Pioneers'
Day— the 24th of July, on which date, 1847, Brigham Young and
party first entered the valley. From any commanding point above
either cafion, one can look out westward over Jordan Valley, over
the lower sections of the Oquirrh Kange, over Kush Valley west of
it, and on a clear day, upon the far summits of Deep Creek Bange,
glittering like silver points in the dim distance. But the grandest
view is from the summit of Bald Peak, highest of the Wasatch
Range, and nearly 12,000 feet above the sea. Thither I climbed to-
wards the close of an autumn day, and overlooked one quarter of
Utah. Eighty miles South of me Mount Nebo bounded the view,
its lowest pass forming the "divide" between the waters which
flow into this basin, and those flowing out with the Sevier into the
Great Desert. Below me lay Utah Lake and vicinity — a clear mir-
ror bordered by gray slopes; far down the valley. Salt Lake City
appeared upon the plain like a green blur, dotted with white ; north-
ward the Salt Lake rolled its white-caps, sparkling in the sun-
shine, while the Wasatch Range, glistening along its pointed sum-
mits with freshly-fallen snow, stretched away northward till it faded
in dim perspective beyond Ogden. A hundred and fifty miles from
North to South, and nearly the same from East to West, were in-
cluded in one view — twenty thousand square miles of mountain, gorge,
and valley.
Eight days sufficed to visit most of the mines of Little Cottonwood.
From thirty to fifty tons of ore were leaving the cafion daily, and
at least a thousand new locations had been made, every one of
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168 WESTERN WILDS.
which the confident owners expected to develop into an Emma. The
last day the air suddenly grew hazy, and, looking northward, we
saw the sky of a peculiar ash and copper color. Old miners shook
their heads ominously and said : ** The fire is sweeping Big Cotton-
wood." Next morning the peaks were shrouded in smoke, and
about 4 P. M., a great white column shot into the sky for thousands
of feet, apparently just over the "divide," then, swaying back and
forth, settled into the shape of an immense cone, and we knew to
a certainty that the wind was "down the cafion," and, consequently,
the fire nearing the Big Cottonwood smelting works. It took me
all the next day to pass the "divide," for the lowest point on the
ridge is 2,000 feet above Central, and the descent still greater on
the northern side. When I reached Silver Springs the fire was near-
ing the town, and after night-fall the sight was indescribably grand.
Prom the summit of Granite Mountain, dividing the heads of Big
and Little Cottonwoods, down through the lake region and Mill
Cafion, to the tops of Uintah Hills — for eight miles in a semicircle
around and above us — the view was bounded by great swaying sheets
of flame. The sky to the zenith was a bright blood-red, and down
to the West a gleaming waxy yellow; while almost over us Honey-
comb Peak, where the timber had burned to a coal, and which was
divided from us by a large rocky gorge, stood out detached and glow-
ing red like a volcano outlined against the sky.
Morning came, and with it detachments of miners from neighbor-
ing camps, working their way through the lower defiles, to fell tim-
ber and " burn against the fire." The town is in a grove of quaking
asp, and was in no great danger ; but, across Cottonwood Creek, where
the Smelting Works stand, the growth is mountain pine, which burns
green or dry. The whole cafton was so full of smoke that the sun
could barely be discerned, and the pyrotechnics of the night had
given place to a death-like gloom. From the creek to the mountain
summit south was a roaring mass of flames, when at noon the wind
suddenly changed, and for twenty-four hours blew almost a hurricane
up the cafton. The timber had been felled for two hundred yards
around the works ; it was now set on fire, and the great business en-
terprise of this camp was saved. After the day of wind came rain,
then snow, and next morning the latter, four inches deep, was melt-
ing slowly into black mud.
South of the Cottonwoods, American Fork Cafton opens upon the
Utah Lake Basin; a succession of wild gorges and timbered vales
cause it to be known as the Yosemite of Utah. A narrow-guage rail-
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UTAH ARGENTIFERA, 169
road, built by Howland & Aspinwall, to transport ore, runs, down
the caiion and out to the Utah Southern; so that the traveler can
reach the head of this cafton by rail from Salt Lake City. There a
rich gold lode has lately been discovered, and there is a prospect of
big developments in that direction. The silver ores are mainly car-
bonates; transportation is vastly cheapened, and low grade ores can
be worked profitably.
East of American Fork, over a very rugged range of peaks, is the
Snake Creek District. The creek empties into the Provo River, and
most of the mining has been done by the Mormon farmers from the
valley below, who go up and mine only in the intervals of farm work.
Such workmen develop a camp very slowly, and the Mormons gener-
ally, except those from mining regions in Europe, are singularly de-
ficient in ability for the business. The student in social science
might find here some curious matter for reflection, in the way the two
classes are located in Utah. The Gentiles arc on the hills, the Saints
in the valleys; and along a single street in the old Mormon towns
the ore wagons pass to and fro. and the tide of Gentile travel ebbs
and flows, making scarcely any impression upon the slow and sleepy
Europeans. Occasionally you will see a Gentile located in one of
these places; but he is always keeping a way-side hotel or restau-
rant, and looks singularly out of place. Without church, school, or
society, his sole interest centers in the Gentile travelers. If able,
financially, he sends his children to boarding-school in the city ; if
not, they get an education as they can catch it. His neighbors charge
him about a third more for produce than they do each other, and
never patronize him in return. The rules of the " Order of Enoch "
are that a Saint can sell to a Gentile, but must not buy of him. The
city council — for every village is incorporated in Utah — always
charges him the largest license they think he will endure, always
raising it if the trade increases; and thus some of these little gov-
ernments are almost supported by the Gentile travelers. Eastern
orators and editors frequently ask why we don't feel more kindly
towards the Latter-day Saints. It is singular, isn't it?
I went next to the Western Districts. Passing the southern point
of the lake, where the Oquirrh leaves barely room for a broad wagon-
road, we enter upon Tooele Valley, eastern section of Tooele County.
This county contains 7,000 square miles, and not more than a hundred
sections of cultivable land ! Of the rest, one-third or more consists of
mountains, rugged and barren, or scantily clothed with timber and
grass ; and 4000 square miles of the worst desert in the world. But it
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170 WESTERN WILDS.
contains three of the richest mining districts in the West, and a dozen
more which promise equal richness when developed. Hence the agri-
cultural (Mormon) population is small, while the Gentile miners have
increased rapidly; hence, too, this is the first, and as yet the only,
county in the Territory to pass under Gentile control, and is known in
our political literature as the " Republic of Tooele.'^ Tooele City, the
county seat, and only considerable town, was long inhabited by the
most fanatical Mormons in Utah ; and when, in 1870, the opening of
mines first set the tide of Gentile travel flowing through the place,
they resisted change with stubborn tenacity. At length Mr. E. S.
Foote, now representative elect from the county, ventured to set up a
Gentile hotel ; but they led him a merry dance for a year or two. The
city council raised his license every quarter, until it took one-fifth or
more of his receipts to pay it; and every Gentile who smoked a cigar,
ate a dinner, or stayed over night at Foote's, was putting from ten cents
to a dollar in the city treasury. Still he pulled through ; one after
auother came, and now the flourishing Gentile colony in Tooele have
church, school, and social hall of their own, and the young Mormons
welcome the change. When the county offices passed into Gentile
hands late in 1874, the old Mormons seemed to expect nothing less
than ruin and confiscation, and are yet scarcely recovered from their
amazement.
Eight miles beyond Tooele is Stockton, the " lead camp of Utah/'
Most of its mines yield from $20 to $40 in silver, and from a thousand
to fourteen hundred pounds of lead per ton. Hence the ore works
almost as easily as metallic lead melts ; and though long considered the
slowest, as it was the oldest, mining town in Utah, with more capital
and cheaper transportation, Stockton is steadily growing in importance.
Here we enter Rush Valley, an oval some fifteen by thirty miles in
extent, with a water-system of its own, and cut off from the Great Salt
Lake by a causeway some 800 feet high. Twenty years ago the center
and lowest point of this valley was a rich meadow, and included in a
government reservation six miles square; now the center of that
meadow is twenty feet under water, and a crystal lake eight by four
miles in extent covers most of what was the reservation. Such is the
change consequent on the aqueous increase of late years in this strange
country. Three deep caftons break out westwardly from the Oquirrh.
In the southern one, known as East Cafion, " horn-silver," or chloride,
was discovered in August, 1870. In three months a thousand men were
at work in that district. Bowlders were often found lined with chlo-
ride of silver, which yielded from $5,000 to $20,000 per ton. Ophir
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UTAH ARQENTIFERA. 171
City, the metropolis, stands in the bottom of a caflon 2,000 feet deep,
which makes a very singular division of the district. On the south side
are bonanzas of very rich ore, mostly chloride in a limestone matrix, with
little or no admixtures of base metal ; on the north side are larger
bodies of lower-grade ore — a combination of sulphides of iron, lead,
arsenic, anti-
mony, and zinc,
carrying in sil-
ver from $30
to f 80 per ton,
and from twen-
ty to fifty per
cent, of lead.
From the series
of mines on
Lion Hill,
south side,
known as the
Zella, Rock-
well, etc., have
been taken at
least $800,000
in silver, leav-
ing an immense
amount i n
sight, CHIX)RIDK CAVE, LION HILL.
Over the sharp ridge which bounds East Cafton on the north is Dry
Cafton, which, was the leading camp of Utah in 1874. There one mine
yielded three-quarters of a million. In this camp carbonates of lead
and silver predominate, all the ore smelting freely. Both caftons are
included in Ophir District, which has passed through the three periods
destined for all new mining camps. The year 1870 was the era of
discovery and high hopes; 1871 of wilder speculation, not unmixed
with fraud ; then came the era of reaction and long drawn-out law-
suits, which were aggravated by the wretchedly unsettled condition of
the Utah courts. It was the era of transition from the old Mormon
system of juries directed by priestly "counsel," to the Gentile system.
The Saints were determined to retain their hold on the courts, or cut
oflf supplies ; the Federal District Judges were equally determined the
courts should not run unless independently of the Mormons. Courts
of Equity in the afternoon enjoined proceedings directed by Courts of
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172 WESTERN WILDS.
Law in the forenoon ; injunctions tied up every thing, and restraining
orders confronted every body, and the weary way of contending claim-
ants lay across a desert of fruitless litigation, diversified only by mount-
ains of fee-bills, and strewn with certioraria, nisi priuseSy and writs of
error. Capital fled the scene of so much contention. There were more
lawsuits impending than the Third District Court could have settled
in ten years. At last some of the disputes reached a conclusion in
court, twenty times as many were compromised, and in 1874 the dis-
trict entered on the more satisfactory stage of steady work and devel-
opment. The deepest mine is now down 1,400 feet, and the great ques-
tion as to whether these are permanent fissure veins is being solved in •
the only way it can be — by digging. The district contains some 1,200
working miners, and about half as many women and children.
Language fails me to portray the hardy enterprise, nerve, and perse-
verance of the miners who are opening the silver lodes of Western
Utah. Roads are being laid out across every desert, trails over every
range ; and on every mountain that lines this Territory and Nevada,
hardy prospectors are hunting for "indications" and opening new sil-
ver districts. The latest enterprise of note is in Dug- Way District,
lying some ninety miles west of Ophir City, across one of the worst
deserts in this desert region. Though this chapter begins with the
autumn of 1871, I have condensed in it my later observations on Utah
mines, and may as well insert here a more complete description of the
Western District.
All the interior of the Great Basin, between the Mormon settle-
ment \Yhich line the foot of the Wasatch, and the corresponding val-
leys which open eastward from the Sierras, has one uniform character
of rugged grandeur and barrenness. It is divided into many inferior
basins by a number of short and abrupt mountain ranges, running
north and south, and furnishing scant supplies of water, with here and
there a stream large enough to irrigate a few acres. Between these
ranges lie almost level deserts — plains where the soil is a compound
of sand, salt, alkali, flint rock, and an incoherent red earth, destitute
of all vegetation, save rare patches of stunted white sage-brush, re-
sembling pennyroyal more than any plant to be seen in Ohio. At
times, however, the entire soil is of an ashy white earth, half of it
probably alkali, solid only in winter and wet weather, but in the dry sea-
son easily stirred up in blinding white clouds. An area of some 60,000
square miles does not contain a hundred sections of cultivable land ;
but at the mountain bases are found considerable tracts of the yellow
bunch-grass. In the old freighting days, the custom of teamsters was
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UTAH ARGENTIFERA, 173
to skirt along these ranges to the narrowest part of the desert, recruit
their stock at the last grass and water on this side, then drive night
and day until they reached the first grass and water on the other side.
Take it for all in all it is about as worthless a region as ever lay out
^oors; and, on the Hoosier's '^Coon-dog principle," ought to be rich
in mines, for it is of no account for any thing else.
The only game in most of that region is jack-rabbits and sage-hens ;
other animals
are the sandy
or horned-
toad, rattle-
snake and
ground-m i c e.
On many of
the hills grows
the pinion
pine, on the
nuts of which,
with grass
seeds, and
roots, and a
chance capt- goshoot ix)VB-rKAST.
ujre of game, the Goshoots (Gosha-Utes) eke out a miserable exist-
ence. The sand-flies live on the greasewood ; the horned toad lives
on the flies; the snakes live on the toads, and the Goshoots eat all
three. From September to December, the Indians fatten up consider-
ably; the rest of the winter they pass in a half comatose state, crouch-
ing over a little fire in brush " wickiups," or lying on the sunny side
of a rock, sleeping as much as possible, with a meal or two per week