1157

Union Mine, Cerro Gordo, 85-Pound Silver-Lead Ingot

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Ingots Start Price:2,000.00 USD Estimated At:4,000.00 - 8,000.00 USD
Union Mine, Cerro Gordo, 85-Pound Silver-Lead Ingot
SOLD
2,000.00USDto i*****l+ buyer's premium (390.00)
This item SOLD at 2014 Sep 14 @ 13:45UTC-7 : PDT/MST
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This bar probably dates from the early to mid 1870's, and was found with the Victor Beardry ingot. 24" x 4 1/1" x 3". Is about eighty Pounds. In excellent condition. The Union was the most important mine in Cerro Gordo. It began production early in the 1860's as one of the first discoveries in the district. Massive silver bearing galena was produced here for about 20 years until the ores began to run out. A smelter was built nearby at Swansea, but most of the ores produced in later years went to Selby Lead in the Bay area for refining. These bars were probably headed for Selby and produced from the later period, as they carry only a small amount of silver, typical of deeper mining at Cerro Gordo. Holabird Western Americana had an assay of a similar ingot in a previous auction completed by bullion analysis. Bullion analyses are the only acceptable method of assay of ingots in the mining and metallurgy businesses. These special assays measure specific amounts of separated metals in a specific sample size allowing very specific calculations of metal content. Settlements between mining companies and the smelter and refiners are only made with bullion analyses. That ingot carries 0.001% gold, 0.578% silver, 97.78% lead, 1.17% copper. The remainder was probably zinc, for which no analyses was done. Zinc is the usual accessory metal in silver-lead deposits. The silver contained within that ingot was about 7 troy ounces. The gold was negligible, but present. The presence of gold, copper and probable zinc shows that ingot to be a classic mine silver-lead ore bar, an ingot poured at the mine. The analysis was made by drilling eleven holes in the back of the ingot. This is a classic Inyo ingot, remnant of a very famous mining camp.

Overview of Cerro Gordo Ingots (Lots 1156 and 1157)

These rare ingots were a classic discovery about 40 years ago. A gentleman found about 11 Cerro Gordo ingots on the surface of Owens Lake after it first dried up, using a metal detector. There were about 4 different company names stamped into the bars using embossed moulds similar to ones in this section of the sale. The bars have since been disbursed to museums and collections.
Cerro Gordo is a mining camp tucked in the Inyo range at an elevation of about 8500 feet. In an article in the Mining and Scientific Press in 1874, the author described it thus: “Cerro Gordo is 8250 feet above the level of the sea. The winter has been very severe, not having thawed for eighty days. Shocks of earthquakes are very frequent but do little or no damage.” The mining camp itself got its start in the late 1860’s, after many prospectors had discovered silver ores there in the early 1860’s. A number of the early mines were worked by Mexicans, and there is a good chance the property as a whole was discovered by Mexican miners before 1860.

Cerro Gordo was in full production by 1868 after an influx of cash by Mortimer Belshaw and Victor Beaudry, who both built large scale smelters at Cerro Gordo, completed in 1868. Belshaw was a successful assayer in Fiddletown, California in the heart of the Mother Lode Country. Beaudry was a prominent Los Angeles business man. Belshaw’s furnace was the first completed. It was announced that “On March 17 M. E. Belshaw and E. Jordan started the first lead-silver smelter on the Pacific Coast, running ever since.” It was further reported that more than 10,000 tons of silver-lead had been shipped to Selby, the private precious metals smelter and refiner located on the east side of San Francisco Bay, about 20 miles north of Oakland.

The two new smelters were processing lead-silver ores from Cerro Gordo’s largest mines, the Union and the Ignacio. Production was so large that the smelters couldn’t keep up. A competitor company with a mine right next door to the Union built a new smelter at the foot of the mountains on the north shore of Owens Lake, a massive lake filling a fertile valley about twenty five miles long and ten miles wide. The competing company was the Owens Lake Silver Lead Company, formed in 1870 by New York capitalists. They built the new smelter at Swansea.

At one time, the base bullion produced by the various furnaces at Cerro Gordo and Swansea was about 12.5 tons per day per smelter for the three smelters. The bullion from the Union and San Ignacio was worth about $115 in silver and $90 in lead per ton. It was reported that the lead paid the cost of transportation to San Francisco, and the smelting and refining cost $25 per ton leaving a profit of about $90 per ton. The cost of mining was not included in the information.

City: Cerro GordoCounty: Inyo CountyState: CADate: