MINING: A Crutch for Cripple Creek

In Colorado's famous old Cripple Creek mining district, which produced $24,986.990 worth of gold in its peak year (1901), men have been boring a tunnel for 20 months in search of pay dirt. Last month they found it. Water gushed from the rock, sent them scurrying from their tunnel. Soon the flow reached 20,000 gallons a minute—enough to cover an acre of ground to a depth of 100 ft. in a single day. The water level in Cripple Creek's long-flooded mines dropped fast. By last week the 2,600-foot-deep Ajax mine (formerly workable only with constant pumping) was dry all...

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