Confidence-Mendocino Mine (Confidence Mine), Jubilee Mountain, Willow Mining District, Black Mountains, Amargosa Range, Inyo County, California, USAi

Regional Level Types
Confidence-Mendocino Mine (Confidence Mine)	Mine
Jubilee Mountain	Mountain
Willow Mining District	Mining District
Black Mountains	Mountain Range
Amargosa Range	Mountain Range
Inyo County	County
California	State
USA	Country

A former Au mine located in secs. 32 & 33, T21N, R5E, SBM, 12.2 km (7.6 miles) ESE of Jubilee Mountain (coordinates of record), and 3.1 km (1.9 miles) W of Ibex Peak (Ibex Hills), in a National Park Service wilderness land (Death Valley National Park/Death Valley Wilderness) area, on private (patented) land. The property consists of 2 patented claims. MRDS database stated accuracy for this location is 1,000 meters.

....The Confidence Mine was first discovered sometime around the early 1890s by an Indian woman named Mary Scott, who thought it was a silver mine and neglected it. In 1895, Mary relocated the mine on a grubstake from Frank Cole and Jimmy Ashdown. When samples showed high gold content, Cole and Ashdown sold the mine to George Montgomery for $36,000. In November of 1895, the Inyo Register reported that Montgomery was in town buying mules to use to haul freight and supplies over 100 miles from Daggett, California, to the mine, which had just begun operations. The mine, said the paper, had opened up some fine looking gold ore, running from $15 to $75 per ton, and due to the transportation difficulties, a 30-ton Bryan mill was being built seven miles below the mine, on the floor of Death Valley. The mill engine would run on gasoline, since it was far cheaper to haul in gas than was the effort to collect wood. Mining expenses in the isolated and little-known region were not helped by the price of $100 per head which Montgomery was forced to pay for fourteen large mules.

During the first part of 1896, the new mine was worked vigorously. The Inyo Register reported early that year that the Confidence Mining Company was operating the mine and mill, with the backing of financiers from Salt Lake City, particularly John Q. Cannon. The mill was under construction, and was expected to be completed soon, and a full force of miners and millmen had been hired, although no accommodations had been provided for them. That was not too bad, said the Register, since "as it seldom rains," everyone merely camped in the open air. The Confidence, said the paper, was one of" the most difficult and expensive mines to work in the country, owing to the scarcity of fuel and water principally, but freighting from Daggett [is] equally as arduous a task.

Due more to its uniquely isolated location in unexplored Death Valley than to its size or importance, the Confidence Mine also received attention from a national mining journal. The Mining & Scientific Press, in January of 1896, reported that the mine had three shafts and a tunnel, with the deepest shaft being about 125 feet. The mill would be ready to run by February 1st. Later that month, the Inyo Register reported that the mill was started up and was running well, and twenty-five men were employed by the company.

In May of 1896, the Inyo Register again reported on the mine, with some detail. It had been purchased in partnership by Cannon, Montgomery and a man named Langford, all of whom were also operating mines around Johnnie and Chispa, Nevada. It had two shafts of 150 feet each, connected by a drift. A well had been dug near the mill, from which a China pump raised "about the saltiest water on earth" from a depth of eighty feet. In order to reduce the water for the mill, it was necessary to first pass it through a condenser. The mill consisted of a rock breaker, a Bryan roller mill with a capacity of twenty tons per day, and a few feet of silvered copper plates. Power was supplied by a 20-horsepower gas engine.

Costly as these provisions were, said the report, they were not nearly sophisticated enough to reduce the rebellious ore to buillion, and consequently the mill had been shut down after only a few months of operation. A fairly large tailing pile indicated that a sizeable amount of ore had been run through the mill in its three-month life, before its owners realized their errors. Indeed, the mill had proved so inefficient that local prospectors claimed they could make $5 per day by panning the mill tailings. The company did not even have assaying equipment at the mine or mill, and in short, said the Inyo Register, "one wonders how they can have any idea of "where they are at" in the mining and milling business."

Supplies were hauled into the mine from Daggett, but when the reporter visited the mill in early May, no superintendent or paymaster had been there since January. Twenty men had quit on April 4th, and scattered across the desert to find one of the mine's owners to demand their pay. "The company must have expended forty to fifty thousand dollars in a mill that will [have] to be extensively added to or removed entirely before they can ever get a dollar out of it."

This story of inefficient and bumbling management caught the attention of the Mining & Scientific Press, which reprinted it in its entirity, with the following introduction: "In vast southeastern Inyo there are mines and mining operations which few residents know anything about. And in that region of mountains and deserts it is difficult to describe locations, no existing map showing anything about them. It is also hard to describe some of the mismanagement in their attempts to get money out of the mines."

The Inyo Independent reported in ate July of 1896 that the Confidence Mine and Mill was still closed down, with "no pay day in sight." The mill still stood in Death Valley, but the owners had not been back to it, and "it looks like the result of bad management." In October, the paper again reported that the "Salt Lake company owning the Confidence mine and mill on the east side of Death Valley in the Amargosa mountains have not resumed operations, neither has it paid a dollar of numerous debts.

The mine remained closed in early 1897, and in February of that year Montogmery sold his half interest in it to Cannon for $81,000--indicating that Cannon, at least, still believed that there was gold in the ground. Two months later, one L. F. J. Wrinkle was reported to have offered Cannon and his associates $100,000 for the mine, plus one fifth of the non-assessable capital stock in a new mining company, and a guarantee that $100,000 worth of work would be done at the property. The Inyo Register, in an understatement, commented that "The figures now offered, considering the isolated location of the property, indicate that a bonanza is believed to exist there."

But that sale came to naught, and the mine and mill lay idle. Further speculation concerning the Confidence property surfaced in 1898, when the Inyo Independent reported a rumor that the Meneva Mining and Milling Company was about to buy the mine from Cannon. Cannon apparently thought so also, for be took the precaution of patenting his claims, but again the deal was not consummated.

Not much was heard from the mine or its owners for the next several years. In 1901, the property changed hands, although it stayed within the Cannon family, and in 1904 the Confidence Mine was listed on the Inyo County delinquent tax rolls, for failure to pay $6.06 in taxes on the patented property. Again a veil of silence fell around the mine, which was not lifted until May of 1907, when the Death Valley Chuck-Walla during an assessment of mining possibilities in that part of the country, mentioned the old Confidence Mine, which had long been idle. With "the renewal of activity in the district in other sections and the opening of new mines," speculated the Chuck-Walla "work will again commence on the Confidence." Later that fall, the Rhyolite Daily Bulletin also mentioned the idle Confidence Mine as one with possibilities, since it had smelting-quality ores.

But despite the optimism of those two mining camp newspapers, the mine was not reopened, even though the Salt Lake organization retained control and title to it. Finally, in May of 1909, the long awaited resumption of work began. The Bullfrog Miner reported that month that the Confidence Mine "which has been idle for several years, has again started work with a good force of men. The development is being backed by Salt Lake Capitalists and unless the extremely hot weather prohibits, will continue during the summer."

The new lessees of the property, the Death Valley Gold Mining Company, worked only sporadically during the summer, due to the intense heat in that portion of Death Valley, but in September operations were stepped up. The Rhyolite Herald reported that W. J. West, the new manager, had taken five sacks of ore from the mine into Salt Lake City for milling tests. The ore was averaging $50 per ton, and the company had three shafts working, down to twenty, seventy and 150 feet, respectively. Apparently the old mill, which was still standing, was deemed inadequate to reduce the ores--not surprising, since it had been inadequate in 1896--and the company was making plans to erect a new mill. As usual, the Rhyolite Herald concluded that the lack of an adequate water supply was the main problem facing the company.

Two weeks later, the Rhyolite Herald confirmed that operations had been resumed on the old Confidence. One Mr. Merritt, who seemed to be heading up the organization, told the paper that he would bring in machinery to the property "as soon as he can conveniently get around to it," and that "if the old Confidence will only do half as well as in the pioneer days it will be all that he will ask." Meanwhile, the men at the mine were sacking the high grade gold ore. The Mining World also confirmed in September that the Death Valley Gold Mining Company was planning to erect a mill in Death Valley, as soon as the Salt Lake ore tests could determine the kind of mill required. The mine, it reported, had a sufficiently large tonnage of ore blocked out to justify the expense of constructing a mill.

One month later, in mid-October, the Rhyolite Herald reported that the Confidence Mine was just completing a shipment to the smelter in Salt Lake City. The ore was regarded as fairly high grade, assaying between $60 and $150 per ton. But after that report, the mine fell idle once again. Apparently the ore tests in Salt Lake City had shown that the ore was too low grade or too hard to process to make its extraction from an extremely isolated corner of Death Valley profitable. In June of 1910, and again in 1911, the property of the Confidence Mining Company appeared on the Inyo County delinquent tax rolls, for the want of $14.11 in county taxes.

Unfortunately, at about this Lime a great desert legend was born, when W. C. Mendenhal I, writing for the Geologic Survey, confused this Confidence Mine with the old "lost" Mormon mine from which the Mormons were traditionally believed to have taken much gold in the 1850s. Mendenhall's mistake, due to the prestige of USGS publications, has been habitually repeated throughout the years, until the truth is hard to separate from the fiction. There is absolutely no evidence that the Confidence Mine in Death Valley is the lost Mormon mine, and there is much evidence to the contrary. The contemporary descriptions of the mine in 1895 and 1896 make absolutely no reference to the Mormons, and indicate quite strongly that Montgomery and his partners were the first men to operate it. Such legends, however, are hard to kill.

In the meantime, R. J. Fairbanks, the enterprising merchant from Greenwater and Shoshone, bought the Confidence Mine and operated it on his own for three years. The difficulties which beset him, as well as previous owners, are best put in his own words.

This was a gold proposition, and in spite of the fact there's gold in there that will run $35,000 to the ton, I operated entirely at a loss. Most of the ore would run about eight dollars to the ton, and I'd have to crack hundreds of tons of the eight-dollar ore trying to get a few pounds of the $35,000 stuff. The financial failure of this venture was due entirely to the utter impossibility of the transportation problem. Everything had to be wagoned in and out from the railroad at Shoshone, and the haul more than ate up the profits After Fairbanks gave up, the Inyo Register printed a rumor in July of 1915 that "It is now practically assured that a new management will soon open" the Confidence Mine. However, that rumor was false, as were those printed by the Mining World in March of 1915. At that time, it was believed that the Corona Mining and Milling Company planned to reopen the mine, and to construct a 100-ton stamp mill on the property. The Mining World went on to repeat the silly tale connecting the Confidence with the lost Mormon mine, and then improved upon that by also stating that the Confidence was the secret source of Death Valley Scotty's wealth. About the only truth to its entire report was the statement that the "workings are in bad shape and have every appearance of having been ruthlessly looted."

Needles to say, the Corona Mining and Milling Company never reopened the Confidence Mine, and it lay idle for several more years. A traveler to the area in 1921 saw no evidence of mining anywhere in the area, and although several desert rats did move into Confidence Wash in the latter years of the 1920s, none of them worked the Confidence Mine. In 1926 the California State Mineralogist reported that the mine was idle and had been for several years, and that the mill had been dismantled. Sometime around 1934, the mine was again operated very briefly, and a small amount of high-grade ore was packed out and shipped to a smelter.

Then, in the fall of 1941, an exhaustive examination of the mine was made on the behalf of some Salt Lake City investors who had become interested in the mine. The inspection of the property showed around 740,000 tons of ore blocked out in previous development work, with an average value of $14 per ton. Although some high-grade ore worth $125 per ton could be found, most of that had already been stripped out by previous operators. Water was available about one and a half miles from the mine, and the examiner believed that enough water could be developed to support a mill. Considerable stoping had already been done by previous miners, as well as the driving of two tunnels, one about 175 feet into the mountainside, and the other about 375 feet. Previous production, according to this report, was claimed to be about $200,000, most of it in the early days of the mine. "If sufficient capital can be secured," wrote the Journal a mill would be built and the property would be brought back into production.

But such was not the case, probably due to the combination of lack of capital and the isolation of the mine, which would have made mining very expensive even in 1941. In any event, mining of gold was forbidden the following year, due to war-time demands, and following the failure of this last effort, the old Confidence Mine was at last left alone."Latschar, 1981

Mineralization is hosted in ultramafic intrusive rock (hornblendite). The ore body strikes N30W and dips 40NE, at a thickness of 18.29 meters. The deposit consists of a series of parallel veins. The two most prominent are the Confidence vein at 40 feet thick, and the Mendocino vein at 60 feet thick. Local rocks include Plio-Pleistocene and Pliocene loosely consolidated deposits.

Workings include surface and underground openings comprised of 2 adits at 175 feet and 375 feet long, respectively, on the Confidence vein, at 200 foot intervals. Other workings include raises, stopes and open cuts.

Production data are found in: Norman, L.A. & Richard M. Stewart (1951).

A small amount of high-grade Au ore was produced in 1934.

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Link to USGS MRDS:	10036099

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References