Osceola Mining Company has been drifting on the vein in their property near Rough and Ready and have reported good prospects.

Republic Mine in the Graniteville district was operated this year and some ore was being crushed during the summer.

Twin Sisters Mining Company, J. W. Howard, General Manager, 420 Forum Building, Sacramento. Organized in Nevada to work the Twin Sisters Group of three claims and three claims on the Independence vein in sections 12 and 13, T. 18 N.; R. 10 E.; just south of Middle Yuba River and at the south end of the Alleghany district. The claims are 24 miles from Nevada City via Snow Point.

Five men have been employed during the fall of 1923. Two adits were run on the Twin Sisters vein by former operators. No. 1 adit strikes the vein 155 feet from the portal and continues on it 280 feet southward. No. 2 adit is 120 feet below No. 1 and was reported 946 feet long when new work began. For the first 300 feet it is in disturbed ground near the surface, then on the fissure for 385 feet, passing into footwall for 100 feet, and the balance of distance on the vein. The property has not been visited by the writer, and the above details are from a report by E. C. Uren, who states that the vein averages 18 inches to 50 inches wide for the last 160 feet. Since new work started some arsenopyrite ore has been found and good prospects have been reported.

The Eureka ditch crosses the Gold Beater claim 370 feet above No. 2 adit and offers a source of cheap power, 1600 feet of pipe being needed.

PLACER MINES.

The tunnel of the Gold Lead Placer Mine had reached a length of 1950 feet and 12 raises had been put up by the middle of the year. Oscar L. Coflin, manager.

Malakoff Leasing Company is engaged at North Bloomfield in exploring the deep channel in part of the old Malakoff diggings. When it was found that the shaft was not yet deep enough to bottom the channel, it was decided to sink 75 feet further, giving a total inclined depth of about 350 feet. An air compressor was taken in this fall to expedite work. W. S. Weaver is manager.

Penn-California Mining Company. Their mining claims are in the Willow Valley district and have been described in our past reports.

Their main adit was driven 2700 feet to a point 600 feet vertically below the center of the ridge then 1500 feet eastward. Raises were put up at 1100 feet (air shaft) 1500, 1800 and 2300 feet from the portal and Hoge reports that 1000 feet of drifts were run from these raises to explore for gravel. Gravel was found, but although a few hundred dollars worth of gold was washed out in the course of prospecting, the manager reports that as a whole the gravel was not of such grade nor of sufficient quantity to justify breasting. It was not confined to a definite channel, but appeared spread out and thin. The last 1500 feet of adit was in slate bedrock, the rest in granodiorite. The adit was in large part double track size.

Recent work has been directed to finding the Buckeye vein which Hoge said he expected to encounter during November or December this

year. He hoped this ledge would reveal ore that would partly pay for carrying on development. The claims are equipped with a 15-stamp mill and sawmill and nine men were employed this fall. Arthur W. Hoge, manager.

Time has not permitted visiting the placer mines of the county this year.

Liberty Hill Hydraulic Mine was in operation a short time early in the year and a small cleanup was made.

Sidney Wood has been preparing for hydraulic mining at You Bet.

COPPER.

Western Copper Company is a consolidation of numerous old mines in the Spenceville district. Eugene Aram of Sacramento and Otto Woehler of Spenceville are forming the company and are part owners of the holdings. The Golden Eagle, Index and Legion claims (formerly the Mineral Hill M. & S. Co.) Arkansas Traveler, Last Chance, Jackson, 16 to 1, San Francisco, Philadelphia and American claims, all patented, and 10 unpatented claims adjoining, are included. The claims are 2 to 3 miles north of Spenceville and 14 miles by road northeast of Wheatland. Many of the claims have been noticed in our last county report, and space does not permit a detailed listing of all the shafts and tunnels driven in the past.

Last Chance shaft is 240 feet deep with only a few feet of drifting at different levels. Mineral Hill adit on Index claim is a crosscut 498 feet long, and is said to cut five veins. In Golden Eagle claim a vein is exposed showing carbonate ore in shallow shafts. The dump of the old Bitner shaft, sunk in the sixties and reported to be 160 feet deep, on this claim, shows pyrite ore, which was evidently too low grade to ship at the time. The Jackson claim has been prospected by the California Tunnel, 950 feet long, which is in the wall rock two-thirds of the distance, then enters the vein through a crosscut, near which a raise was put up 60 feet and a winze sunk 40 feet. From here to the face stopes were put up 10 to 25 feet and according to report considerable good ore was taken out.

Recently work has been resumed cleaning out this last named tunnel, and Woehler reports some good assays. Samples shown as having come out in this work carry chalcopyrite, pyrite, galena, other sulphides and malachite.

BARITE.

Democrat Barite Mine near the Liberty Hill hydraulic mine has produced several thousand tons of off-color barite during the past summer for use in making lithopone. The ore has to be treated by a special process to render it sufficiently white for this use.

F. W. Bradley's Barite property north of the old Spanish Mine and six miles from Washington, was undergoing development during the summer. High cost of delivery of ore to the railroad, on account of the distance, has held back the exploitation of this property.

Placer County.

Mining has been rather dormant in this county also the past year.

American Bar Quartz Mine has been under development during the year and a flume has been built to bring in water to furnish power for the mill. The mine was described in Report XVIII of the State Mineralogist, 1922, June chapter.

Canada Hill Mines have been prospected under the direction of Fred Vahrencamp. The property was described in Report XVII of the State Mineralogist, 1920.

Daniel Webster Mine near Michigan Bluff has been active.

DRIFT MINES.

Baltimore Mine adjoining Forest Hill, has been rather extensively prospected by the owners, George McAulay and J. Steiner of Auburn, during the past two years, the work being done on contract by local miners who at the same time are mining gravel in other parts of the mine. The primary channel in this property was cut off by the later and deeper Blue Lead channel, which here was a wide stream with apparently gently sloping rims. The recent work has been done with the idea of picking up the other segment of the primary channel, and to do this they have run across the course of the Blue Lead, beneath the gravel, and have raised when they thought they were far enough on the other side to be beyond the later trough. The Blue Lead was found wider than expected, and the primary or Forest Hill channel has not yet been picked up.

Glen Mine has been in operation on a small scale. On the basis of royalty paid, the property is reported to have produced $44,000 during 1922, but the yield for the current year has not been reported yet. As far as known, it has been the only productive drift mine in the county. for some time, if we except a few prospectors' lone operations. The mine is described in our Preliminary Report 8.

Gold Dollar Mining Company continues prospecting the Blue Eyes claims near Duncan Canyon and beyond the Glen Mine, south of the Last Chance road. They also began this year the prospecting of the Jack Robinson drift claim, adjoining the Blue Eyes.

Gold Dollar or Blue Eyes adit has reached a length of 2200 feet. An air and exit shaft part way in is used also for ventilating with a blower. Near the face of the main adit crosscuts were run 150 feet each way and a raise was put up 20 feet from the top of which they ran 110 feet ahead. An electric lighting plant has been installed.

At the Jack Robinson claim a heavy run of secondary gravel, which was revealed by former work but never bottomed, is being prospected. This adit is now (Dec. 15) 280 feet long and Moss reports the floor is running into bedrock. Work at both properties is under the superintendence of F. A. Moss, who is convinced that there is a primary channel in the Blue Eyes that has been cut by the later Jack Robinson channel, and that this primary channel fed the fabulously rich early day diggings of Duncan Canyon and its tributaries, one of which was

worked up to near the site of the present Blue Eyes adit. The Blue Eyes claims cover some 2800 acres along a lava covered ridge which is two miles wide in places and the work by Moss is the first sustained effort to explore its possibilities, although many small 'breakouts' of gravel have been worked along the ridge. Moss reports that his company has made the first payment on the Blue Eyes property. This ridge, as well as the opposite ridge on the other side of Duncan Canyon contains large gravel deposits that have hardly been scratched. Some of these appear from such work as has been done, to be small and rich as in the case of the Glen; others are large and lower grade, but if intelligently worked may exhibit pay streaks that will be worth following.

The Guggenheim dredge operating in American River southeast of Applegate has been the principal gold producer of the county the past year.

Plumas County.

This county remains in the lead in the state as a copper producer. As a by-product of the copper mining operations there is also an important production of silver, running from $150,000 to $175,000 a year of late. The copper mines also contribute a large part of the gold produced in the county at present.

Engels Copper Mining Company operating Engels and Superior mines, is the largest metal mining company in the state in point of tonnage of ore handled and gross value of the products. The production of copper by this company has reached as much as a million and a quarter pounds per month during the current year. For the six months ending July first the company produced, according to their report, 7,398.106 lb. of copper, 82,852 ounces of silver and 1318 ounces of gold. On this basis if production does not diminish the year's output will be close to two and a half million dollars in gross value, making allowance for a slight decrease on account of the decreased price of silver. The mill handles about 1000 tons of ore daily, and a total crew of about 500 men is employed. They stated that their operating cost was about 11.45 cents per pound of copper for the first half of the year.

Feather River Copper Company's claims near the Engels Company's Superior Mine were bought this year by Engels Copper Mining Company.

Beardsley Copper Mining Company had completed a mill and were reported to be running an electric power line from the main line in Indian Valley to their claims near Taylor Lake, a distance of about 8 miles, during the past summer.

Walker Copper Mine, operated through a subsidiary by Anaconda Copper Mining Company, enlarged their flotation plant during the summer and it was expected that the new units would be ready for work in October. During most of the year they operated at a capacity of 250 tons a day.

Shasta County.

On account of the closing of the former office of the State Mining Bureau in Redding and the consolidation of the work with that of the former Auburn office at a new office in Sacramento, there has been an increased amount of work to be done both in the office and in the field and there has not been as much opportunity for field work in the northern end of the state since June as was desired. It may be said, however, that gold mining has been very quiet in that section, with little gold production for the year except from the dredgers and placer mines, most of the work recently begun at the quartz mines having been in the nature of prospecting, as will be seen from a short notice of the operations that have come to our attention.

The American Mine in French Gulch district was being prospected during the summer and fall and good ore was reported late in the year.

At the Bonanza Gold Dollar Mine just north of the town of Shasta, a 5-stamp mill was put up in the fall to crush an accumulation of a few hundred tons of ore.

Ganim Gold Mines Company was incorporated in August to continue. operation of claims near Stella, and a small mill was reported to have been put up, but the mine was idle in October. The property is described in our 1922 report, December chapter.

Niagara Mine in French Gulch district was being prospected during the summer by H. M. Thompson.

Preparations were being made to unwater the Reid Mine in July, in anticipation of the reopening of the Kennett copper smelter. This mine was in operation 15 years previous to the closing of the above. smelter and the quartz ore was used as flux at the smelter.

Uncle Sam Mine was being prospected during the summer by the Colma Copper Company. An unusual accident occurred at this mine. in June, when lightning struck and destroyed the compressor building and a part of the machinery.

After eight years operation along Cottonwood Creek in the Gas Point district, Shasta Gold Dredging Company was cleaning up the last of its proven ground in that region in September, and it was doubtful if work would continue much longer.

COPPER.

Interest in mining in this county the past year has been centered upon the operations of the large copper mining companies and the possibilities of their resuming work. With an increase early in the year in the price of copper, and the anticipation that this increase would hold, work was started to put several of the mines in shape for ore production and two of the larger companies put crews of men at work getting the smelters ready. However, the price of copper dropped again about the time the mines and furnaces were ready for production, with the result that conditions were very uncertain toward the end of the year. In spite of the fact that the sales of copper during the past

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