Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0099/00992.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00992}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{The Big Bend
Part III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tyler, Ronnie C.}
$Affiliation{National Park Service;U.S. Department Of The Interior}
$Subject{big
bend
company
mine
quicksilver
terlingua
wax
mining
texas
marfa
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1984}
$Log{See Chisos Mine*0099201.scf
See Candelilla Factory*0099202.scf
}
Title:       The Big Bend
Book:        Chapter 5: Settling The Big Bend
Author:      Tyler, Ronnie C.
Affiliation: National Park Service;U.S. Department Of The Interior
Date:        1984

Part III

Quicksilver

     Although reports of quicksilver in the Big Bend had circulated for years,
no one had ever taken them seriously.  The Indians had used cinnabar for their
war paint and for the red pigments in paintings that can still be seen in
scattered shelters of the Big Bend.  In 1847 Dr. Ferdinand Romer, a German
scientist visiting Texas, traded an Indian a leather lasso for a small
quantity of quicksilver, or mercury.  Both Texans and Mexicans heard reports
before 1850 of the quicksilver, but no serious explorations were undertaken
until 1884 when Juan Acosta reportedly showed a specimen to Ignatz Kleinman,
who operated a general store in Presidio, Texas.  Kleinman took up a claim
near what became known as California Hill and went to work. He failed to find
sufficient quantities to make the mine profitable, but did interest a
California company in taking over the search.  They abandoned the attempt
after finding little ore, although they were on top of one of the richest
fields in the country.  The site of their operations became known as
California Hill when one of the miners carved that inscription on a rock.

     Quicksilver mines quickly dotted the landscape around Terlingua. Mining
began there in 1894 when George W. Manless and Charles Allen investigated the
rumors of rich quicksilver deposits in the region.  They found the deposits
about 90 miles south of Alpine, at that time little more than a station on the
Southern Pacific Railroad.  The Marfa and Mariposa Mining Company, named after
the town and Mariposa County, California, where a huge quicksilver mine was
located, was the first to profitably extract quicksilver from the Big Bend.
Organized in 1896, the company took up a claim near present day Terlingua,
where the California company had failed, and extracted over 9,000 flasks of
mercury (3 quarts, or 76 pounds per flask) by 1903.  The gross sale for the
company in 1901 and 1902 was more than $350,000.  After the "easy" ore had
been mined, however, the company disbanded.

     At its height the Marfa and Mariposa Company employed 1,000 to 1,500
persons.  The four or five white families lived in stone houses belonging to
the company, but the Mexicans lived in tents or crude stone huts.  The
laborers were paid with a punch-out check redeemable anytime at the company
store or in cash at the end of the month.  Although the store stocked only the
barest necessities, it did a good business.  Sugar, corn, beans, and flour
were brought in by the carload.  Work clothing, a few bolts of calico, blue
denim, and shirting also were stocked.  The store's revenue was usually
$100,000 to $150,000 annually.  A popular saying in Terlingua, reported C. A.
Hawley, the company bookkeeper, was that the mine was a silver mine, but the
store was a gold mine.

     The ore proved to be rich but the mines were almost inaccessible. The
wagon road from Marfa, about 100 miles to the northwest, was at best a
difficult route.  Six miles from the mine it became impossible for wagons. The
supplies had to be loaded on pack mules for the trip across dry and badly
eroded paths.  Everything except fuel (the plentiful mesquite trees) had to be
hauled in.  Several Mexicans made a little money hauling goods to Terlingua
and quicksilver to Marfa with their Studebaker wagons.  Strong enough to carry
3 to 4 tons, the wagons required 10 days for a round trip to Marfa.  There was
little profit in the freighting, for the Mexicans charged only a half-cent a
pound and the only thing they could carry out was quicksilver.

     The first miners employed only primitive methods and used shafts no
deeper than 200 feet.  After the ore was brought to the surface it was loaded
into a small car and transported to an aerial tramway.  The car was then
hand-pushed back to the mine, while the ore was transported over the tramway
to the ore crusher, half a mile away.  From the crusher, walnut sized chunks
of ore were taken to the smelter.

     The brick furnace measured about 20 feet square and 40 feet high. Two or
three weeks of continuous heating was required for the furnace to reach 360
degrees, the temperature at which quicksilver vaporizes from ore. The fumes
went out the top of the furnace through a series of 8 or 10 slightly smaller
condensers, connected by a pipe.  A partition alternately extended from the
ceiling of the condenser almost to the floor, then from the floor almost to
the ceiling, forcing the smoke from the furnace to describe an upside down
arch in passing through each condenser.  The quicksilver gathered in the
condensers and ran into buckets.  A smoke stack 30 to 40 feet high attached to
the last condenser carried off the rest of the vapor and smoke.

     Work in the mines was difficult.  The miners worked 10 hours a day, most
of the labor underground and all of it manual.  The ore was loosened by pick
and hammer and gathered up by shovel.  The work was also dangerous.  In
February 1908 a blast killed one man and seriously injured another at the
Shafter mine.  Even the candles used to light the shafts proved dangerous, for
they often gave off too little light for the men to avoid open shafts and
other hazards.  "Miner's consumption," caused by the polluted air, killed
several workers every year.

     There was no hospital but the company employed a doctor who cared for all
the employees.  Although the treatment ostensibly was free, the Mexican
laborers had one day's wages per month withheld for the medical fund, but
white men only $1.  The men worked 7 days a week for $1 to $1.50 per day.
Sometimes an exceptional worker would be paid as much as $2 per day.  Yet C.
A. Hawley, the bookkeeper for Marfa and Mariposa Company, got $100 a month
plus free rent and goods from the company store at cost.

     Several other companies competed with the Marfa and Mariposa Company.
Howard E. Perry, a Chicago businessman, organized the Chisos Mining Company in
1902.  By 1905 the Terlingua Mining Company, Colquitt Tigner Mining Company,
Texas Almaden Mining Company, Big Bend Cinnabar Mining Company, and Excelsior
Mining Company were all in operation in and around Terlingua.  When O. W.
Williams saw Terlingua in early 1902 he noted that considerable improvement
had been made in the last 2 years.  The companies employed probably 300 men to
haul wood, water, and ore, and work the furnaces.  The freight teams kept the
road dusty as they brought in supplies and hauled quicksilver to the railhead
at Marfa.  Texas soon was the number two quicksilver producing State in the
Nation.

     Perry's Chisos Mining Company lasted longer and produced more than any
other.  Perry bought his land in the Big Bend in 1887 and turned down several
offers to sell it at a slight profit before he decided to investigate.  He
found that his land contained quicksilver and set out to mine it.  After
opening the mine in 1902, he returned to Chicago to direct his affairs there,
leaving the mine in control of a succession of managers.

[See Chisos Mine: Water was free at the Chisos Mine, but everyone had to come
to the tank to get it. The house commanding the view of Terlingua belonged to
Howard E. Perry, the mine owner.]

     Perry made several changes in his operation.  At first using the crude
methods of the Marfa and Mariposa Mining Company, he improved his equipment,
enabling his men to dig deeper and extract more ore.  James Lafarelle reported
in 1910 that the depth had already reached 520 feet and that they were
planning to go to 1,000 feet in the new shafts.

     The quicksilver industry received a good boost when James Norman took
some Terlingua ore to the Saint Louis World's Fair in 1904.  The specimens
were so good that several companies filed claims in the region, but most were
never more than small-time or non-producing companies. Capitalized at $500,000
when it opened, for example, the Terlingua Mining Company installed a 45-ton
furnace, but fell on hard times and was worth only $35,025 when it closed in
1903.

     Perry's success drew other prospectors to the Big Bend.  They quickly
learned that the secret of his success was that his tract was the richest in
the region.  The quicksilver ore was limited to a relatively small area near
Terlingua.  Within an area about 14 miles long by 4 miles wide, 30 or more
mines were dug, but most of the 150,000 or so flasks of mercury produced came
from about 6 mines.  The Chisos Company produced more than two-thirds of that
total.  The Marfa and Mariposa Company produced between 20,000 and 30,000
flasks, leaving all the other companies with a total of less than 30,000
flasks.

     Today Terlingua is one of the best known ghost towns in the Southwest and
a monument to the lively industry that once flourished in the Big Bend.  The
site of the World Champion Chili Cookoff, a highly promoted and colorful
celebration dedicated to boosterism and local chauvinism, it has also been
designated a historic site by the State.  The deserted general store, post
office, movie house, jailhouse, and church suggest the activities that
Terlinguans participated in each week during the heyday of the village.  But
the nearby cemetery is a reminder that life in the mines was hard, for most of
the gravestones tell of those who died young. Dominating the entire
perspective is Perry's abandoned house.  Located on a hill overlooking the
village, this sturdy, two-story building is symbolic of what has happened in
Terlingua.  From the front porch one can see the deserted mine shafts that
brought hundreds of workers to the Big Bend early in the century, and in the
distance Santa Elena Canyon and the Chisos Mountains, the impressive landscape
which attracts visitors today.

Mariscal Mine

     The discovery at Terlingua sent prospectors searching throughout the Big
Bend for quicksilver ore.  The site that became known as Mariscal Mine was
discovered in 1900 by Martin Solis in Mariscal Mountain, just a few miles
north of the river.  It was not effectively mined until a store owner from
Boquillas, D. E. Lindsey, filed a claim on Solis' site and began operation of
what he called the Lindsey Mine.  His profits were cut considerably because he
transported ore via pack mules to the Chisos Mining Company for refining.  He
finally sold out to T. P. Barry and Isaac Singer, who, in turn, sold out to W.
K. Ellis in 1916.  Ellis installed his own refining plant and between July
1917 and May 1919 shipped 894 flasks of mercury.  When the price of
quicksilver dropped after World War I, Ellis sold his holdings to the Mariscal
Mining Company, a New York corporation that worked the mines until 1927 when
it finally declared bankruptcy.  The mine was sold at a sheriff's auction in
1936.  William D. Burcham, the company's president, tried to open it again
during World War II, but produced only 97 flasks of mercury and soon closed
it.  Today the mine and old buildings are one of the more interesting remains
in the southern part of the national park.

Other Settlers

     Settlers came to the Big Bend for various reasons.  Max A. Ernst
immigrated from Germany to Texas in 1873 at age 16.  He lived in Alpine a few
years before moving to La Noria, on Tornillo Creek.  In 1898 he leased a
section of land containing a waterhole called the Big Tinaja.  He established
a small store by the same name, and later became justice of the peace,
coroner, law enforcer, marriage bureau, notary public, and postmaster of
Boquillas, Tex.  For a time Kit Williams of Louisiana acted as postmaster,
because Ernst could not legally hold the jobs of mail carrier and postmaster
simultaneously, though he would relinquish neither.  Jesse Deemer, later a
storekeeper in Boquillas, was a German mining operator working in northern
Mexico when he first arrived in the Big Bend.  Cipriano Hernandez, a native of
Caniargo, Chihuahua, and an employee in the Shafter mines, moved to a plot of
land near Santa Elena Canyon in 1903.  He ran a small supply store in a
community called Santa Helena, Tex., until 1914 when the name was changed to
Castolon.  Today the small village of Santa Elena, Chihuahua, is located
across the river from Castolon.

     Several persons moved to the Big Bend for their health.  Milton Faver
might have been the first one, arriving in the early 1850's to alleviate a
severe case of tuberculosis.  After the railroad linked the Trans-Pecos with
the rest of Texas, the word spread quickly.  J. R. Landrum, who later managed
Ernst's store and post office, suffered from chronic bad health and hoped that
the dry climate of West Texas would help him.  So did J. O. Langford, a
malaria sufferer who took up a claim at Hot Springs on the Rio Grande in 1909.
A skinny, man with thin lips, deep-set eyes, and a pleasing personality,
Langford decided to make a health resort out of the hot springs.  He received
plenty of publicity from the Marfa and Alpine editors, who published accounts
of those who had been cured as a result of the treatment and his plans for the
resort.  There were even suggestions that a second resort be built at another
set of hot springs near Castolon on the Mexican side of the river.  T. J.
Miller, who operated a small store at San Vicente, came to the Big Bend hoping
that his wife's health would improve.

     By the late 1890's there were enough people scattered throughout the Big
Bend that two second-class roads were opened, one from Marathon to Boquillas,
the other from Alpine to Terlingua.  When a man named Pitts drove his
4-cylinder Acme over the hills from Marfa to Presidio in 1908, he received
excited attention from the townspeople along the route and praise from the
editor of the New Era.  At Shafter the school children were dismissed from
class and followed the car through the dusty streets. "Actual running time to
Presidio, counting out stops, 70 miles in 3 hours 53 minutes," declared the
editor.  "Chauffeur Pitts states the roads out of Marfa are as good as any in
the state . . . ."

Guayule

     As the new age of chemistry dawned, scientists found uses for Big Bend
plants.  "Guayule, the rubber plant, formerly despised and useless, has
produced a few hundred million dollars worth of rubber in Mexico and Texas,"
reported the editor of the Alpine Avalanche cite in 1911.  "It has brought
riches to those who took advantage of the opportunity when they were asked to
invest in the guayule rubber enterprises."  Several factories were established
along the railroad, but the industry did not last long. The guayule was soon
exhausted, and Big Benders turned to other ways of earning a living.

Wax Making

     The candelilla plant provided the raw material; unemployed Mexicans
supplied the muscle; white men usually provided the capital.  In 1911 Oscar
Pacius, a director of the Continental Wax Company of Little Rock, Ark.,
visited Marfa and Alpine and announced his intention of establishing 10 wax
factories in the Big Bend.  The company already had four producing factories
in Mexico, he explained.  Pacius declared that his company expected to be able
to make about $600 per ton of wax.  By the time he reached Alpine in the fall
of 1911 the name of his company had been changed to the Rio Grande Wax
Company, but the enthusiasm had not diminished.  Another important producer
was C. D. Wood, who established factories at McKinney Springs and Glenn
Springs in 1911.

[See Candelilla Factory: This factory near Candelaria produced wax from the
candelilla plant and was photographed about 1918.]

     Wax making is still a major industry in the Big Bend on both sides of the
border.  In Mexico the government monopolizes production, assigning quotas to
producers and guaranteeing them a certain income each year.  In the United
States a small number of firms buy most of the independently produced wax.
Because the Mexican wax makers have no market for their product after they
fill the government quota, some observers claim that smuggling wax into the
United States is common.  Although candelilla wax has been in demand since
1911, the process by which the pure wax is secured has changed little.  The
plant, which grows wild in the Big Bend, is heated in a mixture of water and
sulfuric acid.  When the wax loosens from the plant, it floats to the top of
the vat, and is scooped off and put into barrels to harden.  It is used in
candles, phonograph records, insulation of electrical wires, leather and wood
polishes, as an agent in the manufacture of celluloid, and as a waterproofing.
Early in the century it was an important sealing wax.  Today most of the wax
goes to the chewing gum industry.  Ruins of old wax-rendering operations can
be found throughout the park, and wax factories still operate outside the
park.

Fur Traders

     A common frontier livelihood that might not be expected in the Big Bend
was fur-trapping along the Rio Grande.  T. M. Meler floated down the river
trapping beavers at the turn of the century.  Perhaps the best known trapper
in the Big Bend was James McMahon, who escorted Hill through the canyons in
1899.  He lived well into this century, trading furs for goods at Johnson's
Trading Post, in the southern part of what is now the national park.

     The trappers brought the furs of fox, coyote, wildcat, and skunk into the
border trading posts.  Often they skinned goats to supplement their income.
Many pelts were captured in the mountains along fur trails that stretched
sometimes 100 miles through the wilderness.  As barter, Elmo Johnson offered
wood, other kinds of fur, chino grass, ropes, and various finished items or
food.  Regular fur traders, in fact, made up his best customers.

The Unwritten Code

     By the turn of the century the Big Bend was fairly well settled. Small
villages had grown up near waterholes - Tornillo Creek, La Noria, Glenn
Springs, and Robber's Roost - and along the Rio Grande.  A number of farms
flourished in the Lajitas-Castolon area.  Ranching, mining, wax making,
merchandising, law enforcement, and the military provided a living for the
early settlers.  Society began to organize into various groups. Livestock
associations, promoting pure-bred cattle, exerted strong influences.  Rev.
William B. Bloys, the "Cowboy Preacher," held annual camp meetings in
Skillman's Grove.  Soon Bloys Camp Meeting was an event that not many Big
Benders missed.  Disciples of Christ, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians
attended the affair.

     The early settlers gradually evolved a code of unwritten laws that
governed their community.  Probably the most obvious one was the frontier's
raw, aggressive brand of equality.  A white man was accepted at face value. No
questions were asked about the years before he came to the Big Bend; no
information was usually volunteered.  Texas had much the same reputation
during its youthful years when "GTT" meant "Gone to Texas," usually for a bad
reason.  In the Big Bend it was accepted that a man might be using an assumed
name.  Thus there are several stories about Milton Faver's background,
including the possibility that he was a murderer and that he had been jilted
by his Mexican girlfriend.  C. A. Hawley was hardly surprised when a neighbor
calling himself Tom White came into the post office at Terlingua and claimed a
pension check addressed to John M. Southard.  He cashed the check with no
questions asked when White explained that he was Southard and had changed his
name when he moved to the Big Bend.  Perhaps the point is better made by the
cowboy who, when conversation around the campfire lagged, challenged his
companions to create a little excitement by telling their real names.

     The fact that white men were accepted as they were emphasizes a second
unwritten law of the Big Bend: dark-skinned men were not accepted at all.
Racial prejudice in various forms was evident to the newcomer.  Hawley, a
mid-westerner unaccustomed to the racial segregation of the South and
Southwest, was surprised to discover that the Mexican stage driver rode with
the whites but did not eat with them.  Working for the Terlingua mining
companies, he also learned that Mexicans were employed for menial jobs and
manual labor, but not for the management positions.  "In this state," a
Brewster County lawyer explained, "we have one set of laws for white people
and one for Mexicans, all in the same words and in the same book."  Prejudice
tainted every relationship between white and brown, even to the point that
Hawley, as manager of the company store, intimidated a poverty stricken
Mexican woman into buying her groceries at more infrequent intervals and in
larger quantities because he had grown tired of selling her a small amount
each day.  Only later did he learn that she bought meagerly because she
usually did not have enough money to buy in larger measures.  When a ranch or
store was robbed, the authorities immediately assumed that Mexicans were to
blame.  Pilares, Chihuahua, was attacked without warning in both 1917 and 1918
by Americans seeking revenge for raids on Texas ranches.  Several residents
were killed, including the mayor of nearby Candelaria.  The amazing
explanation, accepted without qualm by the Anglo-Americans, was that "anyone
living in that particular area, and those who were familiar with it, were
aware that no innocent Mexicans lived in Candelaria and Pilares, Mexico."  An
army lieutenant searching for bandits in northern Mexico revealed a similar
attitude.  Flying over the Rio Conchos, he saw four mounted horsemen.  "I shot
a few rounds at them from about 1,000 feet altitude (too high to hit them), to
see if they would return the fire.  Since they dashed into the high brush
without responding, I concluded they were not bandits, but Mexican cowboys.
The only way to tell a bandit from a cowboy was to use such a test.

     The prejudice extended to Negroes, but had less opportunity for
expression because there were few blacks in the Big Bend.  The editor of the
"Alpine Avalanche" opposed further Negro immigration into Alpine in 1909.
Under the headline, "Not Wanted in Alpine," he editorialized that they would
disrupt the community.  He also suggested a few months later that those
already in the city would have to behave in an exemplary manner or be run off.
At that, Alpine was hardly different from any other Texas city of the day.

     A third unwritten code, which lasted well into the 20th century, required
everyone to arm and defend himself.  A peaceful man who disdained liquor and
"gun-totin," Hawley abhorred such practices. But he had little influence.  As
justice of the peace, he frequently asked men charged with violation of the
law why they carried weapons.  Their invariable response was that no one would
respect them if they went unarmed.  They apparently feared the social pressure
more than the consequences.

     The result of disputes involving a deliberate or insulting wrong usually
was a gunfight.  Hawley remembered hearing the calm pronouncement of final
judgment several times:  "Well, somebody has got to be killed."  This
unwritten rule was responsible for the death of Roselle Pulliam, a Big Bend
rancher who crossed paths with Jim Gillespie, a well-known cowboy.  After
purchasing hundreds of cattle in Mexico, Gillespie brought them into Texas,
probably without paying all the duty required by law.  He cut the fences as
he crossed Pulliam's ranch, and Pulliam sought revenge by reporting the
approximate number of cattle Gillespie had brought in to the Customs officers.
The officials impounded the herd, waiting for the question to be settled.
Gillespie's consequent grudge against Pulliam could be settled only by a
gunfight.  Pulliam moved to New Mexico to avoid the confrontation, but the
episode ended tragically when he returned to Alpine to visit his father and
Gillespie killed him.  It would have been virtually impossible to have secured
a conviction, said Hawley, because the murderer had followed the unwritten
laws of the country.  In this instance, the jury never had the chance because
Gillespie himself was killed before his case came to trial.

Law Enforcement

     The arrival of the railroad spurred the growth of several towns in the
Big Bend: Marfa, Alpine, Marathon.  As the unruly element moved in with
progress, so did the few individuals who became lawmen.  The Texas Rangers
patrolled the region throughout the last quarter of the 19th century.  Their
famous Frontier Battalion did everything from chasing Indians and bandits to
accompanying surveyors down the Rio Grande.  After retiring from the Rangers,
Capt.  Charles L. Nevill remained in the Big Bend, first as sheriff of
Presidio County, then as a rancher.  An even better known lawman who settled
in the Big Bend was James Gillett, who retired from the Rangers to become
marshall in El Paso.  After Nevill and Gillett bought a small ranch in the Big
Bend together, it was not difficult for Nevill to convince Gillett that he had
been a lawman long enough.  He left his marshall's post to become foreman of
the G4 Ranch, which was owned by the Ganos and was near enough to his own
ranch that he could also care for it.  Another popular Ranger who spent a few
years in the Big Bend with Nevill was Jeff Milton, who left the service in
1883 and went on to serve with distinction in the U.S. Customs Service.

     D. E. Lindsey, the man who filed the claim on Mariscal Mine, first came
to the Big Bend as a mounted inspector for the U.S. Customs Service. But the
man who perhaps best symbolizes law enforcement in the Big Bend is Thomas
Creed Taylor, who was stationed at Pena Colorado, near Marathon, shortly after
the turn of the century.  He quit the Rangers in 1904 and ranched until 1918,
when he joined the Customs Service.  In 1942 he was elected sheriff of
Presidio County, and held that office for 4 years.

     The man who later became known as the "father of the Big Bend National
Park" also initially came as a law enforcement officer.  Born in Colorado
County, Tex., in 1871, Everett Ewing Townsend joined the Texas Rangers at age
19, but resigned after only 18 months with the Frontier Battalion.  Moving to
Presidio, he joined the U.S. Customs Service and became familiar with the Big
Bend while fulfilling his job of scouting along the borders for smugglers.
The enthusiasm he gained for the Big Bend while employed by Customs was the
foundation of the Big Bend National Park.

     Americans came to the Big Bend in three phases.  First, the traders and
explorers passed through, finding the region neither hospitable nor available,
for the Indians controlled it.  Then, the U.S. Army and its associates moved
into the Fort Davis area.  Only vital occupations such as beef contracting
could flourish.  Not until the Big Bend had been pacified did the third phase
- miners, farmers, ranchers, merchants, health seekers, and settlers - begin.
Another barrier was isolation.  As the Big Bend was drawn into Texas commerce
through the Chihuahua traders and later through the railroad, more people
settled there - and with them an unsavory element of frontier society.