Aspen, Colorado

Aspen and The Silver Queen Mine.

The streets are (from the center): Aspen, Monarch, Mill, Galena, Hunter, Springs, Original, West End, CLeveland, and are numbered from one to eight.
North from Main: Bleeker, Hallam, Francis, Smuggles (avenues), then North Street, Gillespie, Castle, Maroon, Reynolds.
South from Main: Hopkins, Hyman, Cooper and Durant Avenues.

The production of the Silver Queen from 1880 to 1922 was $100,365,748.
Silver: 72,988,357; Lead: 25,573,729; Zinc: 1,028,289; Gold: 577,930; Copper: 197,440.
Production in 1892 was nearly $8,000,000, and in 1893 about $4,500,000; dropping by 1908 to below 1,000,000.

From 1881 to 1895, the production in silver was: 63,654,000

The richest mine, The Molly Gibson, about one mile east of town (in the Leadville limestone). The main shaft was 1450 feet below collar, or 2880 ft. below the outcrop. The mine was closed down in July, 1923. The Park-Regent was about 3/4 miles North-East of the Molly Gibson. The Little Annie Mine was about 5 or 6 miles south (in the Weber formation).

"Wire" silver was found in the Hope Tunnel at a vertical depth of 1500 feet, and Spurr says it occurs 900 to 1000 feet below the surface. The little Annie is at 10,540 feet in altitude, located on the west slope of Richmond Hill, and production was 1,000,000.

The Hope Tunnel is six mile south on Castle Creek at an elevation of 8,700 feet. In 1923, it was 11,000 feet deep, and was hoped to cut the Little Annie 1800 feet below the surface. One of the areas of greatest production is the North slope of Aspen Mountain, between Tourtelotte Park and town.

About 1 mile south of the Mildand Railroad tracks, is the Bonnybell Mine and Visino Tunnel. Here the blue limestone is absent, the porphyry and Weber shale directly overlying the Leadville Dolomite. The richest ore (1895) lies in the irregular shoots which are parallel with the main faults. At the surface, in the middle of the block, ore was discovered in an outcrop, and $110,000 taken from the Bonnybel open slope without timbering. The Park-Regent is on the Silver fault, and most of the workings are in Dolomite below the fault. Between the solid shale and dolomite is generally 40 to 50 feet of broken blue limestone and shale. The ore is sulfide of lead, zinc and silver in considerabe barite (and Galena, sometimes beautifully crystalized); and the silver is often found native.

Research

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