A $500,000 Mining Syndicate Sends Forty Men Into the Slate Creek Snow
A Montana capitalist bonds a cluster of high-country claims and outfits a wage crew from Seattle and Anacortes for a 60-mile push into the Methow.
Col. W. Thomas Hart, the millionaire mine owner and representative of a large syndicate of capitalists, has bonded property in the Slate Creek district covering several groups of mines, in a deal expected to involve about $500,000. Work of development will be commenced as soon as possible by a force of forty men, who are expected to be at the scene of operations on March 12. Some of the miners will shortly leave Anacortes, and eleven more will leave this city today, while the remainder will join the party at Wenatchee.
The men leaving Seattle were at the Butler last evening in charge of C. C. Harnett of Anacortes, who said they would go to Wenatchee by train and thence by steamer City of Ellensburgh, which has been chartered for the trip to Virginia City. From the latter place to the mines is sixty miles, from fifteen to eighteen of which can be covered by wagon transportation to Robinson Creek. The last portion of the route is through a mountainous section and is the worst of the entire journey. The outfit consists of thirteen tons of steel tools, and the men will have hard work in passing over the last few miles of the road. The members of the party are: C. C. Harnett, Anacortes; Oscar Peveroe, C. A. Grube, John West, Seattle; Grant Neal, E. L. Gerrish, W. B. Fraser, B. M. Templer, E. S. Dodge, J. M. Carpenter, Anacortes; Frank Corliss, Montborne. The men will work for wages.
The claims are in the Slate Creek and Methow district, and are at an elevation of 6,000 feet. At present they may be covered with snow fifteen or twenty feet deep.
The prediction is made that within sixty days there will be 3,000 men in the Slate Creek district.
“The prediction is made that within sixty days there will be 3,000 men in the Slate Creek district.”
This was a classic 1890s resource boom: outside capital bonded the ground, hired wage crews, and sold Seattle readers on a district still buried under snow. The route through Wenatchee and up the Methow is now a recreation corridor, but the booster arithmetic — “3,000 men in sixty days” — rhymes with every rural extraction rush since.
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