LEAD MINING

Deep shafts were often dug to reach the rich veins.

LEAD MINING. The principal attraction of the Dubuque area to the first white settlers. LEAD mining was being carried on in the area as early as 1692 when Nicholas PERROT entered the territory.

Lead in what would later be called the MINES OF SPAIN occurred in layers at the surface, at a depth of approximately twenty feet, and again at fifty feet. Early miners were content to clear away the surface deposits. Shallow mines, pits from five to ten feet in diameter and five feet deep, pockmark the hills south of the city. Native Americans considered the mining operation to be work of the elderly men and squaws. Young men may have had the smelting responsibility.

It is believed that the small-scale mining done by Native Americans attracted Julien DUBUQUE to this land in 1788. Dubuque skillfully persuaded the natives, in an agreement signed at Prairie du Chien on September 22, 1788, to grant him mining rights along the western side of the MISSISSIPPI RIVER near Catfish Creek. Dubuque established one furnace to refine ore near present-day EAGLE POINT PARK while a second furnace was constructed at the mouth of Catfish Creek. Estimates of the amount of ore he annually mined range between twenty thousand and forty thousand pounds. Doubtful about the legality of his agreement with the Native Americans, Dubuque petitioned the Spanish Governor-General in 1796 to obtain formal recognition of his claim to which he gave the name "Mines of Spain."

Upon the death of Dubuque, Colonel John T. Smith and a Mr. Morehead attempted to purchase part of the mining property Dubuque had deeded to Rene Auguste CHOUTEAU in 1804. Attempts by Smith to settle on Dubuque's old claim were met with armed hostility by warriors under the leadership of FOX chief PIA-NO-SKY.

Despite the expulsion of all whites from the Iowa side of the Mississippi, Native Americans continued to mine lead with an annual production estimated in 1811 to be four hundred pounds of ore. Indian mining efforts, still the work of the women and old men, were conducted with picks, shovels, and hoes supplied by traders. There were no shafts and all deep mining was done in a way that the women could walk in and out of the mining area. Ore was carried to the river in baskets where it was then transported to the traders.

Native Americans were paid approximately two dollars in goods for one hundred twenty pounds of raw ore. Lead was so valuable that the natives were encouraged to find sites on which they had previously smelted ore. Using primitive techniques, the natives had allowed much of the lead to be lost in the form of ash. Traders paid the natives one dollar per bushel for the ashes they were able to collect from these sites.

A massacre of Fox on May 5,1830, by a band of DAKOTA, WINNEBAGO, and Menominee led the members of the Fox living west of the Mississippi River to flee to Rock Island, Illinois. White miners quickly took advantage of the situation to move across the river. Troops under the command of Colonel Zachary TAYLOR arrived in Dubuque on July 4,1830, and ordered the miners to leave. Three miners were arrested when the troops returned several days later. In July 1831, a Fox war party retaliated against the earlier attack by ambushing a group of Menominee in Wisconsin. Fearing pursuit, the Fox abandoned their Catfish Creek village forever.

White miners again crossed the Mississippi, only to be ordered out by troops under the command of Lieutenant Jefferson DAVIS. It is thought that valuable mining sites at EAGLE POINT were discovered at this time. This game of cat and mouse with troops chasing the miners back across the river lasted until the land west of the Mississippi was opened for white settlement with the signing of the Black Hawk Treaty on June 1, 1833.

White miners, despite their own disregard for the natives' rights to land west of the Mississippi, recognized the need for LAWS long before the treaty signing. In 1830 the miners, who formed an organization to maintain law and order, agreed to follow the Code of Illinois with the addition of two items. First, each man was entitled to hold two hundred square yards of ground to be worked one day in six. Second, a person was to be chosen to arbitrate arguments with a decision considered final and binding.

Mining in the early days was for lead ores often found in pockets occasionally containing over one thousand tons of ore. Most lead ore occurred in crevices and openings within what are today the city limits of Dubuque. The crevices were vertical and generally found running east and west and along the ridges running in the same direction.

By 1836 the Dubuque area had five operating furnaces each of which smelted seventy pigs of lead weekly. McKnight's furnace smelted an estimated 70,000 pounds per week as did Hulett's furnace. While Lorimier's furnace smelted 60,000 pounds, O'Ferrall's smelted 100,000 pounds. Ore was being shipped at twenty-three dollars per one thousand pounds.

Prices for lead varied widely between $15.00 per one thousand pounds in July of 1837 to $23.00 in August of the same year. According to the federal census of 1840 the single largest industry in Iowa was the lead smelter in Dubuque that produced 500,000 pounds of lead annually on a capital investment of $38,500. This was equal to 20 percent of the total $199,000 then invested in manufacturing in the state.

Estimates of the lead production between 1833 and 1856 ranged from forty million to sixty million pounds of ore. The DUBUQUE VISITOR estimated that in 1838 alone not less than six million pounds of lead were shipped south. The average price was then twenty dollars with the high price being $40.00 in 1853. During the CIVIL WAR, increased demand for lead drove the price per one thousand pounds of ore from $48.00 to $90.

With such huge production, the transportation of lead to market in St. Louis was very competitive. Boats made over seven thousand trips between Dubuque and St. Louis between 1823 and 1848. With over three hundred boats in the transportation business, rates were often cut by as much as eighty percent in cutthroat competition.

Miners in Dubuque lived under a cloud of questionable ownership for many years. Descendants of Auguste Chouteau, believing that they held claim to the land, stated that all other claims in the area were illegal. In a decision that cheered all the miners in Dubuque, the United States Supreme Court held that Julien Dubuque had only received the right to work the land from the Indians and not title to the land itself. Chouteau's claims were invalid.

Lead miners continued to enjoy what appeared to be a limitless supply of ore. In 1841 estimates were made that four times as much lead ore was mined than had been seen in the preceding four years. Much of the mining between 1833 and 1856 was called "surface scratching" referring to the lack of tunneling. One exception was the Thomas Levins mine discovered in October 1850, in which a shaft was dug 120 feet long and small cars were operated on tracks to bring the ore to the shaft, a distance of several hundred feet. Occasionally vast caverns were discovered in which the crystallized lead sparkled like silver and assayed out at 85 percent purity. Estimates were made that five thousand miners would not exhaust the supply of ore in less than one hundred years. In 1875 eighty-five percent of the 25,000 people living in Dubuque were miners.

Controversy arose as early as 1833 when the government attempted to begin a LEASING SYSTEM at the Dubuque lead mines. An agent came to Dubuque in that year but was generally ignored. Another agent came in 1842 with much the same result, but the arrival of two more agents who did lease some sites to miners other than those who developed them led to trouble. The matter was finally settled in district court with the government abandoning the practice.

The continued development of mining activity caused the number of smelters to increase to seven by 1849. The total production of the seven smelters was estimated at thirty thousand pigs annually with the price ranging from $17.00 to $25.00 per thousand pounds. Production varied widely. In 1847 a total of 140,000 pigs of lead were shipped from Dubuque, while in 1848 the number had sunk to 30,000.

Four smelting furnaces were in operation in Dubuque at the beginning of the 1860s. All were located near a source of water that was necessary in the smelting process. Refining lead was simply a process of roasting the ore to burn off the estimated 16 percent sulphur content. The remaining material was then washed free of ash and dirt.

Shifting priorities, rather than a lack of ore, spelled the decline of lead mining in Dubuque. Settlers, recognizing the great opportunities in farming, abandoned the mines to homestead. By the start of the 1900s, Dubuque was no longer a lead-mining community.

Today the names of such mines as the LEVEL CREVICE, Black Crevice, Cleveland Circle, and Royce Frost remain mysteries to many Dubuque residents. The AVENUE TOP MINE was located on University Avenue. The Whipsey Mine, entered through a vertical shaft ninety feet deep (at the corner of Carter Road and Kaufmann) lies at the site near the present DUBUQUE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT administration building. Old mining equipment found in the mines awaits a decision about how and where it could be displayed. See: MINING.