They Struck Gold in the Middle of Tacoma — Or Said They Did

The impression that school section 16 in the southern part of this city is going to be wrested from the state by the men who are claiming it as a placer mining camp is having mushroom growth these days. It seems to be generally believed that the land is valueless for placer mining purposes, and at the same time the Washington [state] attorneys who have aided materially in bolstering up the theory of rich placers inside of the city limits evince great knowledge of the workings of the interior department and are flush with assurance that the original fighting claimant, Mr. McBride, is going to win. The attorneys are doing most of the fighting now.

It will cost the state between $5,000 and $10,000 to carry out the tests now under way, and then, after August 30, the government will follow with its experiments. It is proposed to sink the shafts to bed rock. There will be no known channel whereby the estimated ground can be 'salted.'

From the course now pursued it looks, on the face of it, as if the government did not propose to consider the question of whether there is gold enough to the gravel in section 16 to pay for working it as a placer camp. It has been claimed that 10 cents per cubic yard could be realized from the dirt. It costs the Northern Pacific more than that per cubic yard to hydraulic [mine] a bank back of the steamboat wharf in this city, and yet the conditions are much more favorable there than in Section 16.