Murphy ore was often processed in St Elmo, teamed or taken the 2 miles by rail from the loading bins at Murphy Switch or Lady Murphy switch--the mine's ore bin was actually remarkably close to St Elmo. The Mary Murphy became wealthy enough to build its own milling plant after some time, it was located where the Golf mill is seen on the ICC map, a quarter mile below Romley where the Lady Murphy bin had been and where the South Park had their first water tank in the St Elmo area. There was nothing unusual about mines shipping ore to process elsewhere, most had to because they couldn't afford doing processing themselves. Mines everywhere do it--processing is a specialized, multi-step process and mine owners need cash so sell their ore to mills who sell to concentrators who sell to smelters. At each step people are betting the ore will net them some razor thin margin of profit. The owner of the Pawnee Mill in St Elmo also leased the Lady Murphy mine and processed the ore from that mine which took out one middle man and made him money. Most mine owners didn't have that kind of resource. The Pat Murphy mine, once called the Iron Chest, had an ore bin next to the Lady Murphy's bin on the South Park, a quarter mile below Romley, and also processed its ore initially at St Elmo mills or, after it was invented, at that very cyanide floatation processor. Yep, cyanide--don't eat the dirt in St Elmo. Digerness may be confusing the Pat Murphy with the Mary Murphy--or not, perhaps both mines may just have used the floatation tanks. From St Elmo after local crushing and concentration, the matte went to smelters in Buena Vista or Leadville for final extraction.
Whatever, the flume clearly ends there, with a penstock looking thing dropping down to increase water pressure I'd wager.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2022 11:07PM by degg13.