Leavenworth's Nickel Boom: 'The Largest in the World'
A carload of ore from the Negro Creek district sets off visions of the greatest mining camp in the United States.
Leavenworth, April 24.—Special.—The Post-Intelligencer has already published news of the fact that a car of nickel ore from the Negro Creek mining district, near Leavenworth, was shipped to a smelter at East St. Louis for treatment, and that the result was satisfactory. The smelter reports that the ore contained nickel, 5.4 per cent; copper, 3.15 per cent; cobalt, 2.75 per cent; and that the ore is worth $180 per ton. The deposits of the ore from which the carload in question was taken are unquestionably the largest in the world. The whole Negro Creek country is a huge mass of it. Fully 100 locations were made on it, and the only question was as to its yielding capacity. This now being ascertained, the future is assured, and if the greatest mining camp in the United States is established here in the near future, there will be nothing surprising about it.
“The deposits of the ore from which the carload in question was taken are unquestionably the largest in the world.”
Leavenworth later reinvented itself after mining faded, becoming a Bavarian-themed tourist town. The 1891 nickel claim shows the familiar Northwest pattern: a resource boom promising to remake a place overnight.
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