hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

660 MINING AND MINING STOCKS.
river in San Luis Obispo county, and from a salt lake
in Los Angeles county. The amount marketed is
about 30,000 tons annually.
Sulphur is obtained from the sulphur bank on the
eastern shore of Clear lake in Lake county." It is
freed from earthy matter by heat alone, being finally
purified before passing into the molds by melting in
pots. It was first manufactured in 1861. Hydraulic
cement is manufactured at Benicia, where the limestone
necessary for its production is found. About
1,500 barrels are manufactured monthly.
Tin was discovered at Temescal in San Bernardino
county in 1856 by a Mr Sexton, and subsequently reported
to be found also in Los Angeles, San Diego,
and Siskiyou counties. But it is a pretty well established
fact that this rare metal is in such abundance
in the first named county as to make the possession
of the mine a prize worth contending for. This importance
has been the occasion of litigation, which
has been prolonged from the discovery to the present
time. Ore of the Temescal mine is said to yield 60
per cent of tin. The assay gave 97.9 metallic tin,
with traces of antimony, arsenic, sulphur, and iron,
and a residue of tungsten. The bar so assayed was
made in 1870, and is the first and only bar of tin produced
in the United States from native ore. That
a tin mine, for the discovery of which congress had
offered a bounty of $200,000, should so long remain
undeveloped is somewhat of a reproach, no less than
a drawback, to the community. 27
•An immense deposit is said to exist in Ventura eo.
"The history of the Temescal tin mine is as follows: Leonardo Serrano,
a native, claimed a grant of five leagues of land known as the Temescal
rancho, which claim was rejected by the U. S. land commissioners. In
1859, tin being discovered and Serrano having died, Abel Stearns purchased
of the widow whatever right she had to the land occupied by Serrano as a
settler. The house of the widow was three miles from the mine, and Stearns
appealed from the decision of the commissioners, getting a reversal of it in
the U. S. dist court The locators of the mine then appealed to the U. S.
Supreme court, which restored the five league grant to the public lands in
1867. Pioche & co. of S F. desired to purchase the mine, but failing, bought
the San Jacinto rancho, twenty-six miles from the mine, and endeavored to
float their purchase to make it cover it. Litigation that seems endless haa