The Cripple Creek Mining District presents some remarkable statistics relating to mining applications for United States patents.

The first mineral survey was No. 7324, the Buena Vista lode, then owned by Samuel Daugherty, Mrs. Lucy Blair and Wm. Steel, now a part of the territory of the Isabella company. It was applied for at the Pueblo land office as Mineral Application No. 277, and published in the Cripple Creek Weekly Crusher, April 7, 1892.

The number of mineral survey orders issued to date by the U. S. surveyor general of Colorado, for this district, is 3318, including 5203 lodes, 87 placers and 9 mill sites.

On these surveys there have been made at the Pueblo land office 2478 mining applications, and of this number 1993 have made mineral entries embracing 25,104 acres.

Of the above 1993 entries 45 were for placers, aggregating 2,856 acres.

Deducting from the total area entered we have 22,248 acres of lode claims patented to date.

This gives an average of only 11.42 acres to each lode entry, and remembering that a full single lode claim contains 10.33 acres, and that some entries embrace several claims or locations, shows the large number of fractional claims.

The largest acreage in any single entry of lode claims was Wisconsin, and other lodes commonly known as the Morse group, and now owned by the Portland company, containing 43,388 acres.

The smallest entry was the Blue Flag No. 2 lode, containing twenty-one one thousandths (.021) of an acre.

There have been 67 entries containing less than one-half acre each, and 14 entries containing less than one-tenth of an acre each.

Considering the fact that any entry costs not less than $700, and probably averages more than $1,000, we find the high valuation placed on every foot of ground in the district.

The total areas of patented land in and about the district then foot up as follows:

The above data is from the reference books of the firm of Hills and Willis, mining engineers, their records of patent surveys and like matters being, probably, the most complete in the district.

SMALL ACREAGE.

A striking feature of the Cripple Creek district is the small acreage possessed by most of its great producing mines. A few companies have a considerable acreage.

Excepting the above very few companies of this district own as much as 40 acres, and the average is probably less than 20 acres.

Hundreds of rich producing mines have less than ten acres of ground each, showing the marvelous richness of the territory as a whole.

ACREAGE VALUES.

The value of ground, independent of special known ore veins, has probably never reached so high a figure in any mining community in the world. The selling price of patented ground ranges from $2,000 to $3,000 per acre about Globe and Mineral hills and other comparatively less favored territory, and price ranges from $7,500 to $12,500 per acre, about Battle Mountain and Bull hill. These figures are based on actual cash sales, know by the writer to have been made within the past few months. And it must be borne in mind that these values refer only to patented ground, not containing any known pay-ore shoot.

The possession of a producing ore-body, of course, takes the property at once out of any acreage basis.

Thus the present quotations of;

• Portland stock values its land at $46,000 per acre.
• Acacia, $23,500 per acre.
• Elkton, $40,000 per acre.
• Garfield Consolidated, $43,200 per acre.
• and so on indefinitely.