The Crest of the Continent: A Summer's Ramble in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond. Ernest IngersollЧитать онлайн книгу.
impetus was given to Pueblo in 1878, when a company of gentlemen decided to build a smelter here. The work was put under the charge of its present superintendent, and ninety days from breaking ground the furnace was in operation. There was only a single small one at first; but fourteen are running now. Then there was a diminutive shed to cover the whole affair; now there are acres of fine buildings. Then a dozen men did all the work; now from 380 to 400 are employed, and the pay-roll reaches $375,000 per annum. That’s the way they do things in Pueblo.
This smelter is on the northern bank of the river, just under the bluff. From a distance, all that you can discern over the trees is a collection of lofty brick and iron chimney-stacks, and wide black roofs. Coming nearer, the enormous slag-dump discloses the nature of the industry, and testifies to the quantity of ore that has passed through the furnaces. Though on the banks of a swift river, the works are run by steam, which can be depended upon for steady service, and on which winter makes no impression. A thousand tons of coal and seven hundred tons of coke a month are used, the cheapness and proximity of this fuel forming one of the inducements to place the smelter here. Cañon City and El Moro coals are mixed, but the coke all comes from the latter point. At the start an engine of 60-horse power supplied all needs, but a new one of 175-horse power has been found necessary, and Denver was able to manufacture it. As for the machinery, it is not essentially different from that in other smelters, except in small details, where the most approved modern methods are made use of. There are great rooms full of roasting-ovens, immense bins where the pulverized and roasted ore cools off, elevators that hoist it to the smelting furnaces, and all the usual appliances, in great perfection, for charging the furnaces, drawing off and throwing aside the slag, and for casting the precious pigs of bullion. All walls and floors are stone and brick; everywhere order and neatness prevail. This plant has already cost the firm $200,000, and they have enough more money constantly put into ore and bullion to make $750,000 invested at the works. The ore is bought outright, according to a scale of prices which is about as follows: Gold, $18.00 per ounce; silver, $1.00 per ounce; and copper, $1.50 per unit.
GARDEN OF THE GODS.
This is reckoned by “dry” assay, being two per cent. off from “wet.” For the lead in the ore, 30 cents per unit up to 30 per cent., 40 cents up to 40 per cent., and 45 when over 40 per cent.; but both lead and copper will not be paid for in the same ore. From the total is deducted $20.00 as fee for treating it. For the assaying a capital laboratory of several rooms is provided, where two assayers and two chemists are continually busy. Every lot, as purchased, is kept separate and subjected to a homeopathic process of dilution, until a sample is obtained that represents most exactly the whole. The arrangements for crushing and sampling the ore are very complete, and a large number of lots can be handled at once. When the final sample has been reached it is subjected to a very careful assay, not only to determine what shall be paid for it, but to find out what are its qualities in relation to the process of smelting. This process requires a certain percentage of lead, a certain amount of silica, and a certain proportion of iron and lime in each charge. It is the duty of the assayers and chemists to ascertain precisely the proportions of these ingredients in the ore under consideration, in order to know how much lead, iron, lime or silica, to add in order to make a compound suitable to fuse thoroughly, even to the dissolution of the desperately refractory zinc and antimony; and which, also, shall yield up every particle of silver and gold. The iron and lime have usually to be added outright in this smelter; but the proper proportions of lead and silica are obtained by combining an ore deficient in one of these elements, but containing an excess of the other, with ores oppositely constituted. It is one of the advantages of the smelter at Pueblo, that, being centrally placed and down hill from every mining district, it can draw to its bins ores of every variety; thus it is able to mix to the greatest advantage, and in this economy and the attendant thoroughness of treatment, lie the possibilities (and actuality) of profit.
The lime for flux is procured three miles from town, and costs only $1.00 a ton, while every other smelter in the State must pay from $2.50 to $5.00. Its building-stone is a splendid quality of cream-tinted sandstone procured in the mesa only a short distance away. So widely satisfactory have been its results that the Pueblo smelter does the largest business of any in Colorado. I saw ore there from away beyond Silverton; from Ouray and the Lake City region; from the Gunnison country and the Collegiate range this side; from Leadville (competitive with Leadville’s own smelters); from Silver Cliff and Rosita; and, finally, from numerous camps in the northern part of the State. The last was surprising; for it meant that all that weight of ore had been brought hither past the furnaces at Golden and Denver, because the owners realized more for it, in spite of excess of freight, than they could get at home. The superintendent told me that they handled more ore from Clear Creek county than all the other smelters of the State; and he explained it by showing how his nearness to fuel, and consequent saving in this important item, with his cheap labor, permitted him to bid and pay more than any other smelter could for choice ores, for which a premium is given. These facts were held in mind when, encouraged by the railway, the smelter was placed here, and the expectations of its projectors have been more than gratified. The present capacity of the establishment is 125 tons of ore a day in the fourteen blast furnaces, and 100 tons a day in nine large calcining furnaces. Expensive improvements, and of the most solid character, are being made constantly in all parts of the works. The most important of these has been the erection of machinery for refining the bullion, which has a capacity of twenty-five hundred tons a month, and is constructed on the best known principles. It has been customary in the West to send to New York the lead which results from silver refining; it is made into sheet-lead and leaden pipe, in which form it is bought by wholesale houses in Chicago and St. Louis, to be again sent to Colorado, at the rate of perhaps a thousand tons a year. Now it is proposed to keep at home the profits and freightage of this costly and heavy material in house construction. Machinery has therefore been added to make up all the lead into sheets, bars, and piping. This is done so cheaply, that Pueblo can now send it across the plains and undersell Chicago and St. Louis in the Mississippi valley. The supply largely exceeds the home demand, and a new export for this State has thus been created. Utah will henceforth yield a large portion of the bullion to be refined. Another experiment will be the refining of copper. There are various mines in New Mexico and Arizona—many of them worked in ancient days by the Spaniards—which supply a base form of metallic copper. This crude copper is now nearly all sent to Baltimore, and there refined and rolled. The New Mexico division of the Denver and Rio Grande will soon penetrate the region of some of these mines, while the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe makes others accessible. Side-tracks from both these roads run into the smelter’s enclosure. To bring the copper here will therefore be an easy matter: and it can be produced in shape for commercial use much more cheaply than any Eastern factory is able to turn it out.
Another large factor in Pueblo’s revival was the establishment there of the steel works. These are the property of the Colorado Coal and Iron company, composed of the leading men in the Denver and Rio Grande railway, so that, though the two corporations are distinct, their interests are closely allied. This powerful association was formed in 1879 by the consolidation of two or three other companies having similar aims, and it became the owner not only of the steel and iron works here, and of a great deal of real estate, but also of nearly all the mines of coal and iron now being developed in this State. Its capital is ten millions, and its principal offices are located at South Pueblo. It employs over two thousand men in its various enterprises, and is constantly enlarging its operations and perfecting its methods. Many of its coal banks will be referred to in other paragraphs of this volume. The ore derived from all its iron mines is exceptionally free from phosphorus, and therefore well adapted to the manufacture of steel. The subjoined analyses exhibit the character of these ores:
| Metallic Iron. | Silica. | Phosphorus. | Lime. | Alumina. | Magnesia. | Manganese. | Sulphur. | |
| Placer | 52.2 | 12.64 | .051 | 5.70 | 3.6 | 3.12 | .34 | Trace. |
| Salida | 65.8 | 5.78 | .015 | .34 | 1.5 | .81 | .22 | .014 |
| Villa Grove | 57.3 | 5.03 | .019 | 1.87 | .006 |
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