GREATEST GOLD STRIKE EVER KNOWN
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Portland Has Opened the Richest Vein Encountered in the History of Colorado.
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NOTHING LIKE IT EVER SEEN HERE
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A Carload of It Will Be Worth Two Hundred Thousand Dollars.
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SHIPMENTS ARE TO BE MADE THIS WEEK
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The Rich Streak is From One to Three Feet in Width and is Found At a Depth of 950 Feet.
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The Portland is the best gold mine in the state of Colorado. It has been the big proposition of the greatest gold camp on earth for nearly five years now, and is pretty certain to hold first place for years to come. In the past the Independence, Strong and Gold Coin were thought by many to be equal to it, but a discovery made a few weeks back and which is now made public for the first time, will place the Portland so far ahead of its rival that no on will be liable to question its right to be called the king of the camp.

In a crosscut ran east from the 700-foot drift from the Burns shaft, at a point some 300 feet north of the old abandoned working shaft of the Anna Lee, a vein of fabulously rich ore was entered some two weeks ago. Rumors of the big strike have been floating around camp for the past week, but for reasons best known to the management, no information could be obtained in regard to it.

The new ore body was cut on the Hidden Treasure, about 240 feet east of the old Lee vein. A drift has been extended 75 feet on the chute, which has an average width of 4,5 feet. There is very little waste in the vein filling.

Along the hanging wall the high grade streak of sand quartz and hard fluorine stained rock varies in width from one to two feet. This streak was stripped in running the drift and the work of breaking it was commenced a few days ago.

The rock broken in drifting has been shipped and ran from $60 to $100 per ton, with little or no sorting. The sand quartz is very light and porous, and varies in width from ten to twenty inches. Some picked specimens of it appears to be half gold.

An assay on a sample of four pounds which was picked off the full height of the drift from a ten-inch face, showed a value of a little less than $38,000 per ton. No assays have been obtained running less than 400 ounces, or $8,000 per ton on this ore.

The fluorine quartz seam alongside it is not as rich, but assays better than two dollars per pound. It is fairly alive with sylvanite.

A strong and large wooden room, heavily padlocked, has been built in an abandoned drift, and here is where the ore is being stored. A broad-gauge car of each kind will be sent to Denver the latter part of the week. Each car will bring more money than any car of ore ever taken from any gold or silver mine in Colorado.

The sylvanite ore will easily average $4,000 per ton, and the sand quartz fully $8,000. The Portland load their cars on an average with 25 tons. This means $200,000 for one and $100,000 for the other.

The importance of the strike cannot be overestimated. It has doubled the earning capacity of the only Portland. The stock will advance in price and will have a tendency to check the downward movement of other good Cripple Creek mining shares brought about by the war. The strike is still of greater importance, on account of having been made at such a great depth. The breast of the drift is 950 feet below the surface, and several hundred feet beneath the water level.

It proves that with depth ore chutes in the camp improve both in richness and width. The same vein was uncovered on the Captain three years ago. Near the surface the grade was not as high, and the width was only a few inches. The ore now which is being carefully sacked at the 950-foot level, is richer that any ever mined in the camp, and there is plenty—twenty times more of it.

Below the water line, and at 900 feet beneath the surface, Cripple Creek has produced the richest body of gold ore ever opened. It is in the already noted Portland.
The new chute was found by a cross-cut run east from the Anna Lee drift about 300 feet north of the big chimney, and is known as vein No. 5 in the development work in the ground opened by the former manager, J. H. McKenzie, and lies in Hidden Treasure ground, about 250 feet east of, and parallel with the main vein of the Portland.
Assays soon jumped up into the hundreds of ounces and the work continued. Up to the present time the drift has run 75 feet on the chute, and the breast is still in ore.
A five-foot ore body in three seams: one of a disintegrated rock that partakes of the character of sand quartz, and lies on the foot wall from ten to sixteen inches in width, and is of fabulous richness.
Against this comes a seam of fluorite-stained quartz that carries all through it great blotches and cubes of sylvanite, similar to the rich stuff of the Orizaba, and from eight to twelve inches in width; on the hanging wall side lies between two and three feet of ore that is shipped at from two to five ounces, as taken in the work of stripping the higher grade seams.
Either of these seams would be enough to make an ordinary bonanza.
Specimens of large size show to be nearly half gold, and almost every piece of the rock in the carload that is being prepared would make a handsome cabinet specimen.
Assays are superfluous, but the usual mine samples taken daily range in the unusual figures of from $1,000 to $40,000 a ton.

The filled stopes in the Hidden Treasure section of the Portland are to be tapped and the ore conveyed by underground tram to the Independence, to be there hoisted for treatment at the Independence mill.