Silver Cell Mine: Whiskey Creek’s Hidden Horn Silver

The mine lies on Whiskey Creek, “within two miles of Pinos Altos.”^[1] The three Dimmick brothers operated a dairy ranch along this same creek, selling their milk in both Silver City and Pinos Altos.^[1] The terrain is characterized by low hills and projecting ledges—a detail searchers should keep in mind, as the discovery occurred when one of the prospectors sat down on a ledge and struck it with his pick.^[1]

One morning in September (almost certainly 1890), two of the Dimmick brothers set out to round up their cows.^[2] During the search they picked up a chunk of rock that one brother—having no pocket knife—bit down on; the rock held the deep impress of his full set of teeth, “as if he had bitten into a cake of beeswax.”^[2] Recognizing it as pure horn silver, they returned with picks and shovels. After three days of “exciting labor” they found the vein.^[2] The first blow of the pick brought up a piece of malleable horn and native silver worth over twenty dollars.^[2] They proceeded to sink a shaft 65 feet deep and, without stoping on either side, extracted $15,000 from that shaft.^[2]

According to camp-fire lore, the mine was located and recorded under the colorful name “Horn Silver by G—d,” though in later stock-board quotations it appeared simply as “Horn Silver” (or, in the newspaper accounts, “Silver Cell”).^[1] After the Dimmick brothers sold their interest, the mine passed to “the company”—which by August 1891 had paid cumulative dividends of $4,300,000, including a dividend that very month of $100,000.^[1][2] The ore body consisted of malleable horn silver and native silver, with early surface specimens rich enough to stop a prospector mid-stride.^[2]