Five Million Tons of Iron Ore Reported on the Pend Oreille
Spokane and Coeur d'Alene investors say they have uncovered a deposit near the Canadian line to rival Minnesota's Mesabi range — silver and lead included.
The following from the Chronicle is relative to one of the big propositions down the Pend Oreille river:
Officers of the International Leadhorn Mining Co. announce that H. H. Shallenberger and Solomon Mayer, of Spokane, and W. E. Seelye, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, who are interested in the corporation, have uncovered several hundred thousand tons of iron ore on the property near the boundary line between Northeastern Washington and Southern British Columbia.
It is estimated the deposit contains fully 5,000,000 tons of commercial ore. The product is declared to be equal to that of the Mesabi range in Northern Minnesota, carrying also silver and lead. It is believed the ore can be mined and loaded on cars at 25 cents a ton. The cost of eastern pig iron in the Pacific country is $17 a ton.
The property, situated on and north of the international boundary line and three miles from the junction of the Salmon and Pend Oreille rivers, has an area of three-quarters of a mile by one and a half miles. It is occupied by an immense body of ore on one side of a creek and large bodies of lead and silver bearing ore on the other side. A greater part of the property is iron. The lead lies between the iron deposit and the international boundary.
“It is estimated the deposit contains fully 5,000,000 tons of commercial ore... equal to that of the Mesabi range in Northern Minnesota.”
The Pend Oreille country has been sold on mineral promise for more than a century, from iron and lead to the eventual reality of a quieter timber-and-tourism economy. Booster geology like this — a 'Mesabi of the Northwest' — is the same playbook every rural county still runs when it courts outside capital.
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