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Los Angeles Mining & Smelting Co. $500 Bond, Inyo, Cal. 1886

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Stock & Bond - Mining Start Price:150.00 USD Estimated At:300.00 - 600.00 USD
Los Angeles Mining & Smelting Co. $500 Bond, Inyo, Cal. 1886
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Incorporated in New York. $500 Debenture Bond certificate #2 issued to C. Wolcott. Signed by Thomas R. Lombard as president and H.H. Balch as secretary. Vignette of a group of miners extracting ore from the shaft. Coupons attached to the right. Uncancelled. Printed by F.F. McBreen, N.Y. After hearing about a rich strike of silver-lead ore in the Resting Springs district in 1874, "Professor" William D. Brown and his brother Robert D. headed to the Amargosa east of Death Valley in 1875 to look for more. They found it just south of Resting Springs on the old Spanish Trail. It was an "immense body of splendid ore" which they named the Balance (Lingenfelter). They promptly sold an interest to George Hearst and formed the Balance Cons. Gold and Silver Mining Company. Hearst had previously missed a chance at the brother’s Darwin discoveries. Jonas Osborne, one of the first to arrive at the camp, bought some other claims from the Brown brothers. By 1877, Osborne needed more capital to work the bulk ores but George Hearst had lost faith in the mines. So Osborne found new investors in Los Angeles and formed the Los Angeles Mining and Smelting Company. He then bought the Balance properties along with the Noonday and four other mines from the Brown brothers including one named the Gunsight. The Brown’s had started a town site they called Brownsville, and Osborne bought it for $100 and renamed it Tecopa. He then sold town lots at Tecopa before moving on to Resting Springs, six miles away where he installed the "Davis Pulverizer", a newfangled rotary mill. He then started selling lots at Resting Springs. Osborne’s mining venture went through many fits and starts and he even tried building a mini-Sutro Tunnel to tap the Gunsight lode, 800 feet below the surface croppings. With ore proving not to be rich enough, and the shareholders not willing to pay another stock assessment, the firm shut down in 1881.  In 1883, Osborne bought the properties back and spent a lot of money and the next two decades trying to find a cheap way to get the ore to the smelter. He held on until 1906, when the Tonopah and Tidewater tracks came within 6 miles of the mines. Osborne then sold his interest for $175,000. The new owners eventually shipped $4 million of ore and it became the biggest metal mine in the whole of Death Valley and the Amargosa (Lingenfelter). Osborne likely carried on the company name through the twenty year period, so our certificate is from the second stage of the company’s development. Very Rare. VF. Fourteen coupons attached at right. Uncancelled. City: Inyo/ Resting Springs State: California Date: HWAC# 51227