The Chicago Quartz mine was originally a placer mine when New York natives Noah S. Batcheler and his younger brother Joseph B. Batcheler were out prospecting in western Shasta County and located it on May 2, 1866. At this location, Noah discovered a series of three quartz bearing gold ledges which he dubbed the “Chicago Series.” Immediately the Batcheler siblings incorporated the Chicago Company which owned and operated the Chicago mine and began extracting gold from one of the three ledges. Why was the name Chicago rendered? No one really knows why, however, his discovery sparked a boom in the area and a new community formed approximately three miles northwest of Piety Hill, named South Fork.
With the discovery the similarly named mining district began to burgeon with success though not everyone liked the name of the district. The Shasta Courier newspaper offered the following opinion on May 12, 1866, “We suggest that the name be changed to “Eclectic,” which would at least have merit of originality.” The suggested name was a nod to the second placer mine located in the area, called the Eclectic mine by M.H. Peck. Yet the name South Fork stuck to the area. Both placer mines contended with one another and the local media frenzied over the rivalry.
On, May 30, 1866 the Shasta Courier reported the following: “The Chicago, South Fork, has been stripped over a thousand feet. For that distance the ledge shows the same as when first opened. It is a fixed fact and undoubted success – the Chicago is.” In July of that year the Chicago Company delivered about fifteen hundred pounds of rock to San Francisco where it was shipped overseas to Swansea, Wales for reduction.The rocks were assayed and the lowest value being $125 per ton of rock and the highest at $654.25. Reports indicate the rock could not be crushed at the stamp mill due to other base metals and it had to be smelted.
The placer mine also changed ownership as the Shasta Courier reported the following on March 9, 1867: “SALE OF THE CHICAGO MINE – We understand that Mr. Walsh has effected a sale of the Chicago claim to parties in San Francisco for $35,000, the first installment of which amount has already been paid. It is understood that the purchasers will take full possession at once, and proceed to more fully develop it. The sale of this mine will enhance the value of others in the district, and quicken the enterprise of quartz mining throughout the county.”
By April 20, 1867, the new owners of the Chicago Company employed twenty men to enhance the mine by driving two tunnels on the property. The former placer mine was now a solid quartz mining operation with each tunnel driven seventy-five feet into the hillside and one shaft into the surface of the earth. These were the only adits on the property. A solid piece of rock containing mixed minerals was extracted from the mine and it weighed an impressive 450 fifty pounds. The Chicago Quartz mine was now a rich producer of silver with eight tons of silver ore stored away on the property. According to a county report by W. Burling Tucker in 1923 the mine yielded $100,000 worth of ore between 1866 and 1881. The main shaft on the property was dug to about 180 feet below the surface of the earth and the initial assays of gold from that shaft were assayed at $200 per ton during those years.
During 1867 a new quartz mining settlement called Chicago was settled by miners. Its name was derived from the nearby Chicago mine. The Batcheler siblings lived in the settlement at that time as voter registration records indicate. Noah was listed as a farmer at age forty-eight and Joseph was listed as working as a district recorder, aged of thirty-two. In 1868, the settlement being of a large enough population to establish the Chicago Election Precinct.
Above: a group of miners standing in front of the Chicago Quartz Mine. Courtesy of Shasta Historical Society.
Charles N. Kingsbury, a resident of Igo, began operating the Chicago Quartz mine during the 1870’s. A fifteen stamp mill was erected at the south fork of Clear Creek and a milling process began but the new owner, ignoring the earlier reduction reports, began crushing ore at the new mill. After undergoing a pan-amalgamation process amalgamators discovered that the concentration was imperfect due to a chemical reaction with other base metals in the ore. The process was abandoned and the owners were forced to reship their ore to Swansea.
Though some accounts claim that the Chicago Quartz mine closed in 1876 due to litigation, other reports like the one above from Tucker and the following report from Phillip A. Lydon in 1973, claim that the mine operated until the 1890’s when it was left dormant. During 1900 the mining property was explored with very little work occurring and dormancy continued. In June of 1904 a plat map of the Chicago Quartz mine was issued to its owner, a woman named Anna B. Slater. Additional mines included in the Chicago Quartz mine property are the following: the Richmond mine, the Madison mine, the Cold Spring mine, the Silver Falls mine, the Pillchunck Consolidated mine, and the Union Company’s mine.
The Richmond and Madison mines were in production prior to 1900. County reports confirm that the Richmond mine had three shallow shafts, which were known as the Wright shafts, and these shafts were assayed and valued at 400 ounces a ton. Miners working the Madison mine extracted deposits from the well-known Chicago-Madison vein. This impressive vein ran in a drift of 12 inches to two feet wide, and the gold from this vein assayed at $26.00 per ton. The ore from the Chicago-Madison vein was now being shipped to the Mammoth Copper Mining Company’s smelter at Kennett instead of Swansea.
In 1920 the Chicago Quartz mine was purchased by F.M. Archer, and new developments took place on the mining property. The following year, a lucrative silver strike was made and the dormancy ended and production was reinstated. Archer and his miners continued to lower the shaft at the Chicago mine. In 1922 an additional bond was made on the mine and exploration of the property continued. The mine became inactive with brief periods of mining under different leases until 1954. Work on the property continued in 1961 as a new road to the mine was cut and graded. It has been idle since. The Chicago Quartz mine is also known as the Chicago Consolidated Mine and the Chicago-Silver Falls mine.
(This article was written by Jeremy M. Tuggle.)
