[Photo album documenting the operations of three mining companies in Baker County, Oregon, 1908.]

Woltz, J. Fred (photog. and compiler)

Editore: [Baker County, Oregon, 1908]

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Oblong 4to album (7" x 10.75"), black cloth over boards. 51 silver prints with manuscript captions in white ink on mounts. Images numbered in the negative. Numerous blank leaves. CONDITION: Album and photos very good; first leaf detached, second leaf partially detached but intact. An album vividly documenting three Oregon mining operations in which the compiler, a St. Louis photographer and businessman, owned stakes, with detailed annotations. This album documents two trips to Oregon undertaken in May and Oct. 1908 by J. Fred Woltz of St. Louis, Missouri, a man of perhaps sixty who is pictured in several photos. One image shows the officers and proprietors of the Summit Mining Co., including Woltz, who served as Transfer Agent and Registrar of Stock for the company, and others, most of them from Oregon. The first part of the album pictures a statue of Sacajawea in Portland, Oregon s city park; the property, mills, and camp of the Summit Mining Company in Rye Valley, along with the quarters of the mill s laborers; a stamp battery in the Summit mill; the entrance to the Summit mine tunnel; several shots of laborers at work at the mill; an "improvised miner s cabin" at the "Intermountain Camp," with women, a child, a dog, and a man posing outside the cabin; a photo of Woltz with four miners at their cabin; Reservoir Canyon; and a landscape where a proposed tunnel was to connect the adjoining Rainbow and Summit mines. Also documented is the Rainbow mining camp, built in 1906, which at the time was producing over $40,000 in gold per month. Pictured are the Rainbow camp as seen from Mt. California; a freight train taking supplies to mining camps; an ore bin of the Rainbow mine; Woltz at the mill; the Rainbow Stamp mill; Summit Mining Co. s offices; "where the gold from the Rainbow mine is cast into bars"; miners leaving the mine for dinner; W. E. King, manager of the Rainbow mine and Gen. John W. Bubb; the interior of W. E. King s house, and a miner s cabin in Reservoir Canyon. Images of the Intermountain Mining Co. s operation picture employees at their boarding house for dinner; several tunnels; the Sky Mine (discovered by Jered Wagner and his partner), which was sold to Intermountain Mining Co.; workmen building a road from the mine to a reduction mill; the reduction mill under construction; the stamp mill, and so forth. The album is rounded out with shots taken during Woltz s travels to and from the mines showing a horse-drawn stage leaving Durkee, Oregon, carrying the mine superintendent of the Intermountain Co.; the Durkee railroad station (located 19 miles from the Summit mine); a railway station in Cheyenne, Wyoming; Portland, Oregon s Government building; Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs, CO; the mill of the North Pacific Lumber Co. in Portland, OR; and Bear Canyon on the Denver & Rio Grande Railway. The album is dedicated to one W. E. Georgia. J. Fred Woltz is known to have worked in the real estate business during the 1900s, selling farmland in Missouri and timberland in Arkansas. In various 1906 ads relating to the present Summit Gold Mine in Oregon, Woltz advises prospective investors to "invest your spare money in shares of the Summit Mining company now, as when the improvements under way are completed, no more stock will be issued"; and details "an opportunity to a few investors to share in ground floor profits: ore runs over $100 per ton." In 1906, Woltz also advertised a free booklet, "The Money-Sense of God": "Send for one; it will interest and teach you how to make money on small capital." Woltz s brother John Woltz was a noted developer in Cincinnati. A vivid and cohesive album documenting mining operations and associated scenes in early twentieth century Oregon. REFERENCES: Chicago Tribune, Dec. 22, 1906, p. 17; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 4, 1906), p. 11.

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• Titolo: [Photo album documenting the operations of three mining companies in Baker County, Oregon, 1908.]
• Editore: [Baker County, Oregon, 1908]
• Rilegatura: Rilegato
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Photographs