BIG CYANIDE PLANT.
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Florence to Have the Largest One Ever Built.

Ground will be broken at Florence next week for the largest cyanide plant in existence for the treatment of gold ores, the South African tanks being exclusively occupied with the treatment of tailings from the stamp mills.
The new enterprise is inaugurated by Denver and foreign capital, the Denver men, as has been the case since Colorado's gold movement set in, taking the lead.
Merrs. D. H. Moffat, Eben Smith and Charles J. Hughes of this city are the local directors.

Philip Argall, a mining engineer of this city, and who recently received United States patents for important improvements in the McArthur-Forrest process—so far as the same is applicable to Colorado gold-silver ores—designed the proposed plant.
He will go to Florence next week to start the construction. Contracts for the material and machinery have already been let. The new plant will contain six tanks, each with a capacity for 100 tons of crushed ore.
It takes about three days to complete the leaching of a single charge, to begin with, will range from 150 to 200 tons per day. The cost is stated at close to $60,000.

The site selected is on the line of the Florence and Cripple Creek railroad, about a mile and one-half from the Rio Grande depot, in the town of Florence.
Ample provision is made for an early enlargement of the works to 300 tons per day.

At Mound City, in the Cripple Creek district, the cyanide process with the Argall improvements has been feeling its way to success all summer.
The Mound City plant, with capacity for ten tons per day, is now being enlarged to fifty tons. It has handled about 2,000 tons of Cripple Creek gold ores of all grades and conditions and has emerged from its experiments upon solid ground.
The cost of chemicals has been reduced to less than the average cost of roasting. In the Mound City and Florence plants roasting will be dispensed with, hence the new venture will be able to compete in the ore market with the chlorination plants, and will doubtless give the smelters a challenge on medium grade ores.

The work of construction at Florence will be pushed as rapidly as safe building will permit, which means a speedy conversion of the large low grade dump at the Anaconda and other mines owned in the Cripple Creek district by the Moffat-Smith syndicate.

At the moment the Florence mill, using cyanide, is in operation on ore from the Cripple Creek district.

The metallic reduction cyanide plant at Florence increased the capacity in November to handle 240 tons per day.

Reduction Works - Florence:

Name: METALLIC EXTRACTION CO.
Type: Cyanide
Capital: $500,000
President: Eben Smith
Vice-President: D. H. Moffat
Secretary: A. H. Reid
Treasurer: George E. Ross-Lewin
Superintendent:
General Manager: Philip Argall
Manager:
Lessees:
Description: plant, 400 tons capacity
Employes: twenty-five employes.
Contact:
Notes: mill at Cyanide, one mile from Florence; Denver office, 827 Equitable building.

The April's output of gold from Cripple Creek has been computed and the figures at hand show increase rather than diminution of the steady stream of wealth flowing from the mines. During this month the Metallic Extraction Works outputted 9,000 tons.

The Metallic Extraction cyanide mill in Florence treated during June fully 8,500 tons for a total of $161,500.

The July output of gold ore, in spite of the fact that the month claimed a long holiday, the Metallic Extraction Mill treated 6,500 tons with average value of $22.50 to a total of $146,250.00. This is a decrease of 2,000 tons since June.

During 1897 the Metallic Extraction Co. Works in Florence, using cyanide and running exclusively on Cripple Creek ores, treated 75,584 tons with a production value of $1,604,870.

The works of the Metallic Extraction Co. may be considered to embody the best practice at the present time in the treatment of Cripple Creek ores direct from the mine by the cyanide process.
They treat a type of ore requiring fine grinding and being so hard as to tax severely the best crushing machinery, while the more part of it (containing the gold as telluride) requires a preliminary roasting.

The rich ore in the 400-foot level of the Jack Pot is holding out well. It is claimed that there is 18 inches that will average $1,000 to $3,000 to the ton.
The output at present is about 40 tons per day, and it all goes to the Metallic Extraction works at Florence. Very little of the high grade is being broken at present.

The Victor mine is shipping from 75 to 100 tons of ore daily. It all goes to the Moffat mill at Florence.

The Metallic Extraction Co. works were in operation during 1898.

Metallic mill, Florence, output for September was 8,500 Tons of average valued ore of $20 to a total Value of $170,000.

During December 1899 the Metallic Mill in Florence output was 8,250 tons of average value $20 for a total of $165,000. While the value output for the Cripple Creek District was $2,968,250.

Denver, Colo., Feb. 2, 1900—During January the Metallic plant in Florence processed 9,000 tons making a bullion value of $180,000.

During February the Bi-Metallic mill outputted 8,500 tons with average value of $20.00 for a total of $170,000.

Denver, Colo., March 15, 1900—Metallic Gold Extraction Co., cyanide, at Florence, addition to present plant, 100 tons a day, now completed.

The Metallic plant treated 9,000 tons of ore at value of $25 during November, for a total of $ 225,000.

In 1901 the Metallic Mill, before it was consolidated, handled 31,500 tons at a value of $1,037,500. Rest of the year the consolidated Metallic, National and Union Mills handled 80,000 tons at a value of $1,904,000.

United States Reduction and Refining Company.— This company, of Florence and Colorado Springs, is removing some of the machinery from the old Metallic cyanide plant, at Cyanide, to Canon City, for use in the construction of the new smelter. The Metallic property, at one time the best equipped and largest mill in the valley, may never be worked again.

United States Reduction and Refining Company.—The work of tearing away part of the building and machinery of the old cyanide mill at Cyanide, two miles north of Florence, by this company is still in progress.
Several carloads will be shipped to Utah and the balance sold.

MILL TRUST LOST PLANT
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Big Building at Florence Is Destroyed by Fire—Hints of Incendiarism.
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Florence, Jan. 21.—What is said to be the biggest fire in the history of Florence occurred today when the Metallic mill, located a few miles north of the city, the property of the United States Reduction and Refining company, was burned to the ground, causing a loss to the company of $200,000.

The origin of the fire is not known. It is claimed that incendiarism is evident and those not in sympathy with the union claim that it is responsible. Others, however, claim that the wind blew some ashes from the pipe of a workman into some oily refuse in a corner of the building. This it is said immediately caught fire and in less than five minutes the whole interior was a roaring mass of flames.

Workmen who are employed in a certain portion of the mill were nearly overcome by the gas and smoke before they could reach the ground. The flames communicated to the Florence and Cripple Creek railroad depot, one office building and a half a dozen small dwelling houses which were burned.
The occupants escaped in all cases. The loss to these buildings was nearly $50,000.

By the destruction of the Florence and Cripple Creek depot telegraphic communication was cut off.

The mill was the largest cyanide plant in the world.

The fire is still burning at midnight tonight.

Cyanide Plant Burned.—The cyanide plant of the United States Reduction and Refining Company, located about two miles north of Florence, was recently destroyed by fire, the loss being estimated at over $75,000. It was said to be the largest cyanide plant in the world.
It had been closed down for two years and was being dismantled. Part of the machinery was to be shipped to Utah, where the company is building a new mill.

Denver, July 27—The report circulated that the plant of the United States Reduction & Refining Co. at Florence would be closed down, as a consequence of the railroad merger in the Cripple Creek district is positively denied by the management.

At Florence, at the site of the now extinct Metallic Extraction Company's cyanide mill, long operated, using the roasting cyanide process on Cripple Creek ores, is an immense tailing dump.
This has been the subject of recent investigations, but as yet no method of treatment has developed by which the material can be made to yield a profit. The dump has an average value of $1.40 per ton. Treatment at original mesh, and even after regrinding to slime, fails to remove a payable amount of value, employing the cyanide process.
A mill was recently erected to concentrate this material, but after a short run the plant was transferred to Utah, the inference being that non-payable results were met with.

Info first appeared in E. & M. J. issue of July 5, 1902. Among a much longer article mention Cripple Creek milling stuff in-between technical info about crushing and ore treatment there appeared following info about the methods of weighing the ore and determining its moisture contents at the works of the Metallic Extraction Company at Cyanide, Colorado:

• The ore was usually weighed on railroad track scales with self-registering beams; when the beam is balanced, a soft paper card is slipped into a slot and the lever pulled down, stamping the gross weight on the card.
• The car number, lot number, and date are then written on the card, which is filed away until the car returns unloaded, when the same operation is repeated for the tare.
• The weighmaster enters the weights in his book and sends the card to the settlement clerk, who keeps it until the lot is settled for.
• The card helps to settle many disputes as well as prevent errors in reading the beam.
• The moisture sample is taken from the rejected portion of the ore passing the cutters, say three times for each car, taking equal quantities and placing them in a can.
• When the last is taken, the can is shaken to mix the ore and 1 lb. is then weighed up in the presence of the seller, packed in a tray and put in a steam-heated drying closet and kept there, locked up, usually for 24 hours, when it is weighed again in the presence of the seller.
• In the case of talcose ores, which are difficult to put through the crushers without a preliminary drying, the moisture sample is best taken from the car immediately after weighing.

At a banquet to celebrate the completion of the second unit of cyanide plant for the treatment of low grade dump ore at Stratton's Independence, Cripple Creek, Philip Argall gave a speech containing interesting reminiscences.
Toward the end of 1894 he built the first large custom-plant for the direct cyanidation of telluride ore, and in the following year he introduced preliminary roasting. This plant was that of the Metallic Extraction Co. at Florence. At the close of his engagement in 1901, the capacity had been increased to 10,000 tons per month, and the cost of treatment had been reduced to one half.

Cyanide Tailings Treatment.
An interesting plant which will be in operation around May, June is that of the United States Reduction & Refining Company, at Florence, Col. At this place are the large tailings dumps of the old Union plant and the Metallic Extraction Company.
There are upward of 300,000 tons of material in each dump, representing the tailings from the early application of the cyanide process on Cripple Creek ores.

The success which the company has met with in cyaniding old tailings at the Standard plant at Colorado City has led to the erection of the present plant at Florence. About 400 tons of tailings will be treated daily at the new plant, and a good net profit is anticipated.

THE BATTLE of the processes has been nowhere waged more vigorously than in Colorado, where chlorination and cyanidation have competed with varying success during two decades for preference in the treatment of the ores of Cripple Creek.
For a long time the big battalions of capital were on the side of chlorination, the principal plants using the process being consolidated in a corporation capitalized at £2,500,000 and known as the United States Reduction & Refining Co., which must not be confounded with the smelter trust, called the American Smelting & Refining Co. or its chief rival, the United States Smelting, Refining & Mining Co.
Cyanidation is the victor, for it has been apparent for several years that the application of tube-milling and cyanidation to the tailing from the chlorination plants had placed these in a humiliating position. The Standard mill at Colorado Springs, the last of the chlorination plants, has just been closed-down, leaving cyanidation in undisputed possession of the field.
The mill trust has now four chlorination mills on its hands, besides a plant for using zinc-fume in manufacturing paint, all of which are idle. These originally cost £300,000, or, if we include the Metallic Extraction plant, about £400,000, against which stocks and bonds were issued for £2,500,000.
No assets remain, save the residue discarded in the heyday of chlorination, now only a memory.