is low and affords very little stoping ground; and most of the mining formerly carried on there was in the nature of stripping the small amount of soft fossil ore occurring above water level and then abandoning the locality for some fresh outcrop. The dips of the ore bed are about 35° northwards and 20° southward.
Felker opening.—The first opening on the southeast dip is on property of the Rev. Mr. Felker, from there in order westward are W. R. Graham’s three openings on both dips; John Snyder on the south dip; Joseph Snyder on the south dip; the Phillips or Cuppel’s openings on both the south and north dips of the south anticlinal, and finally the series of openings on the south dip on the property of George McKee. In all of these openings the Sand Vein furnished a medium quality of soft fossil ore from 16″ to 2 feet thick.
Phillips’ opening.—The only active operation carried on in this entire ridge during the season of 1888 was that of Mr. Phillips on the old Cuppels property. The drift he was working was situated on the east side of the road leading across Jack’s mountain to the Kishacoquillas valley. The opening is about 20′ above the level of the road and perhaps 50′ above the little stream which cuts through a portion of the Ore ridge here sufficiently to expose the several outcrops to east attacks. The gangway is driven eastward for about 30 yards on a north and nearly vertical dip in the south leg of the narrow synclinal here present. Then it crosses through the “Soap Stone” slates contained in the synclinal and strikes the north leg of the ore basin on a 60° S. E. dip, and has been carried further east on this bed perhaps a hundred yards and considerably stoped. The bed is about 16″ thick here, occasionally carrying a thin seam of slate, 5″ or 6″ from the bottom; and near the ends of the breasts where they are stoped out to the outcrop some 70′ above the level of the gangway, the bed was seen to stand nearly vertical. On the south side of the ridge the ore is from 20″–24″ thick, but there is very little room for stoping before the outcrop is reached.
Only four miners are at work here in May, 1888, obtaining an output of about 8 tons a day, all of which was
