The Silver-Lead Company Bets on Metaline
Ore assays, new concentrators, and a bunkhouse point to a mining camp shaking off its slow start—and Newport money is buying in.
B. F. Bourn, of Rathdrum, secretary of the Silver-Lead Company, was a Metaline visitor the past week, returning from the Lead City Saturday. Mr. Bourn reports considerable activity at Metaline, and with the development work that has been accomplished and the building of concentrators, this famous camp is at last coming into its own. A raft of lumber will be sent down to the Metaline this week for the building of a bunk house, boarding house and blacksmith shop for the Silver-Lead Company. The development work on the company's claims the past winter shows results which are highly encouraging. Two iron dikes run through the property, one thirty feet wide and the other twenty feet. Samples of ore from these dikes appear to be very rich in lead and have been sent to be assayed. It is thought that they will run at least 80 per cent lead. The Silver-Lead Company has four claims located right on the river bank, just below the foot of navigation, and the managers of the company feel that they have a property which will show up well. Considerable stock in the Silver-Lead is being taken by Newport people.
A carload of machinery arrived over the Idaho Washington Northern on Sunday for the Spokane Lead Mines Co.'s new concentrator at Metaline. In the lot were two crushers, a vanner and a miscellaneous lot of shafting and pulleys.
“This famous camp is at last coming into its own.”
Metaline's mining revival was built on outside capital and local optimism, a pattern familiar in rural Washington, where resource booms still promise transformation but often leave communities exposed to commodity swings. The story also shows how Newport residents literally bought into the camp's future.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.