A Report on Washington TerritoryRuffner, William Henry
History
A Report on Washington Territory
Ruffner, William Henry
Washington (State)
This bed of ore is known as The Summit, or Guye Mine. Its elevation is
1,250 feet above the grade of the Lake Shore Railroad, and about 1,000
feet above the small stream at the foot of the mountain. There would be
no difficulty in building an inclined plane from the ore bank to the
small valley below. The snow in winter might interfere with mining.
Ascending the mountain above the main exposure, I found what seemed to
be another level of iron ore 100 feet higher; but possibly it may be the
same bed displaced. Still higher appeared to be a third level of ore,
and higher still, I observed a little float ore at a point nearly 2,000
feet above the grade of the railroad, on what may be called the summit
of Mount Logan, at a point which my barometer made 4,700 feet above
Puget Sound.
[Sidenote: Denny Mine.]
The Denny Mine is on a different mountain, somewhat farther to the west,
but about the same distance from the railroad. It is reached also by a
narrow valley from which a steep ascent of nearly 1,100 feet is made to
the main exposure, which shows an edge of pure fine-grained magnetite,
about twenty feet thick, with limestone above, and also beneath,
apparently. Fragments of epidote, porphyry and flinty quartzite lay
around. The limestone did not show so large here as on Mount Logan. The
ore dips steeply toward the south, and seemed to encrust the mountain
for a distance of, perhaps, 225 feet, but with a somewhat broken
surface. It then passed with its limestone under quartzite cliffs which
crest the mountain. The bed might have been followed around the
mountain, where it is said to show at a number of places. It seemed to
pass into a matrix of chert.
[Sidenote: Chair Peak, or Kelly Mine.]
I did not visit the Chair Peak, or Kelly Mine, which is some miles
distant; but I conversed with probably every man who ever saw it, some
half a dozen, including Mr. Whitworth, who made a survey of the
property. It is reported as probably the largest and purest of all the
deposits of magnetic ore, and lies at about the same height on the
mountains. This ore would come out by way of the Middle Fork of
Snoqualmie.
[Sidenote: Middle Fork Mines.]
I did not visit Guye's other mine, which lies high, perhaps 3,000 feet
above Middle Fork. Mr. Guye represents it as similar in character to the
bed elsewhere, with the addition of some brown and red ore. The other
deposits mentioned I received no description of.
[Sidenote: All easily reached from Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern
Railway.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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