The Silver Cell Mine: A Whiskey Creek Bonanza

The mine was situated on Whiskey Creek, within two miles of Pinos Altos, a district that had drawn prospectors since the 1860s. ^[1][2] The tale of its discovery echoed that of Utah’s famous Horn Silver: two prospectors, weary, dirty, and discouraged, sat down upon a projecting ledge of rock. Bill.” ^[1][2] According to the story told around the campfires, the mine was located and recorded as the “Horn Silver by G—d” rather than the plain “Horn Silver” that later appeared on the New York and San Francisco stock boards. ^[1][2]

The two discoverers, whose names are not preserved in the surviving account beyond the partner called “Bill,” profited sufficiently from their strike that they never needed to prospect again. ^[1][2] After the mine was sold to a company, it paid a total of $4,300,000 in dividends up to the time of the 1891 article, including a dividend of $100,000 paid that very month. ^[1][2][4] This prodigious output placed the Silver Cell in the company of other celebrated Grant County producers, such as the Lake Valley mine’s “bridal chamber,” which had yielded almost solid silver, and the Rescue mine between Pinos Altos and Central, where ore at 46 feet assayed 1,382 ounces of silver per ton. ^[10][5]

The newspaper narrative then turned to a second, more recent discovery on the same creek, involving the three Dimmick brothers, who kept a dairy ranch on Whiskey Creek and sold milk in Silver City or Pinos Altos. ^[1][2][4] One morning the previous September, two of the brothers started out after the cows. ^[4] One of them picked up a piece of rock that was beautiful on the hillside; closer examination led them to think it was a more valuable ore. To their great astonishment and joy, there remained distinct and deep the impress of his full set of teeth, as if he had bitten into a cake of beeswax. ^[4] They knew they had a chunk of pure horn silver. They subsequently sank a shaft 65 feet deep, from which they took $15,000 without stoping on either side. ^[4]

McClellan as president. ^[3][6] The company’s mines, situated in the Silver Flat mining district about three-quarters of a mile southwest of Silver City, were served by a fifteen-stamp mill and a wagon road in excellent condition. ^[7][8] Mining engineers estimated that the ore from those properties would yield a net profit of $27.50 per ton, with a daily net profit of $550.00 from twenty tons crushed by the fifteen stamps. ^[9] The Silver Cell, by contrast, appears to have been a more spectacular but less systematically developed property, its riches discovered by accident and extracted with the same improvisational energy that characterized the early days of the district.

The district had been prospected since the 1860s, and by the 1890s it was connected by stage to Deming, a station on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads, fifty miles south of Silver City. ^[6] The climate was favorable for outdoor operations the entire year, and the region’s mines, when worked with economy and system, yielded handsome returns. ^[6] The Silver Cell’s $4,300,000 in dividends, paid from a mine discovered by two discouraged men sitting on a ledge, stood as a testament to the capricious fortune that could still be found in the hills of Grant County.