The low price of silver during the past two years has resulted
disastrously to the mining industry in Calico District. The great
Waterloo, for many years the largest producer, and employing not less
than 150 men in mines and mills, was closed down, as it seemed foolhardy
to exhaust the great ore bodies when the profit derived from the
extraction and milling of the ores was merely nominal. For years these
mines had kept the sixty-stamp Boss process mill and the fifteen-stamp
pan mill at Daggett busy night and day, but in the spring of 1892 the
stamps were hung up and the mines closed, awaiting better prices for
silver.
The Silver King Mining Company (limited), of London, has continued to
operate, dropping twenty to thirty stamps night and day, under the
superintendency of William S. Edwards. The King Company owns or controls
three important groups of mines in this district, viz.: the Odessa, the
Oriental, and the Occidental. The Odessa made a record during the early
history of the camp by the production of ores of high grade. The policy
which was pursued in those “palmy days”—to gouge out the rich ore
whenever it could be found, without regard to future condition of the
mine—left most of the mines in very bad shape. The Odessa is now
recovering under the new management, and the property is being
systematically opened, and it is thought all the ore can be extracted.
In this mine are stopes from which thousands of tons of ore have been
mined, and there is not a stick of timber of any kind in them.
These old stopes are being cleaned out, new levels opened, and good
results are expected in the future. What applies to the Odessa in this
respect is true to a great extent of every other large mine in Calico.
They were all worked in a hand-to-mouth sort of fashion, and although
many of these mines paid handsome dividends, little of the money was
ever put back in anything like permanent improvement. All seemed to
share a common opinion—that the deposits were superficial, and would not
go down, and as a result no one felt like laying out money in an
extravagant and unwarranted manner. But the mines have gone down, and
the men in charge of the mines to-day can see the result of the mistaken
economy of the early operators, and see in Calico an era of recovery of
low-grade ore bodies and development work which is calculated to give
the mines greater apparent permanency than ever heretofore. December 1,
1891, the King mill was enlarged by the addition of ten stamps, making
thirty in all. The Boss process of continuous amalgamation was also
adopted.