Congress Mine
The Congress vein was considered a peculiar formation, characterized as "a dike of green stone trap."
The most valuable ore-bearing rocks could be found lodged on or near a foot wall in the ledge usually in drifts 12 to 15 feet high.
One of the early prospectors was Dennis May, who would later discover the Congress Mine, but not until twenty years of sporadic, small scale operations in the immediate area.
According to the Martinez Mining District records held by the Sharlot Hall Museum, Prescott, May first co-located a claim on the "Date Creek Lode" in 1870.
May, again through promoter Frank Murphy, sold the Congress group in 1887 to Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds for $30,000.
Properly capitalized as the Congress Gold Company, a stamp mill was built and the mine opened.
Gage, formerly superintendent of the Grand Central in Tombstone, the company relocated its miners and mill men to open the Congress.
A week before president McKinley's visit, Staunton had completed the second 40 stamp mill and expanded the roasting and cyanide works.
The Western Federation of Miners had entered the district, with rumors of violence (the company's water pump was later dynamited by persons unknown).
This caused great anxiety to the stockholders of the Congress Gold Mining Company and they began to acquire adjoining claims and nearby land.
Four more ore bearing ledges were discovered near the main (Congress) shaft which by this time had reached a depth of 3,200 feet.
These ledges followed the same general geology as the previously discovered ore deposits running at an angle near 22 degrees.
[6] The gold-bearing ore became scarcer the deeper the miners went and work underground diminished while the tailings were reprocessed.
The Congress paid its last dividend in 1910 and company president Frank Murphy ordered the operation closed down.
The DCA, unable to pay its bonds, and its subsidiaries collapsed in 1911 with the Phelps Dodge and Guggenheims' ASARCO interests picking up the pieces.
[15][16] In 1912 the bankrupt Development Company of America (DCA) lost the Congress Mine but to the Frank M. Murphy interests.
[20][21][22] By 1914 the vast majority or reports concerning the Congress Mine centered on possible schemes to rework the tailings.
A brief revival occurred with the rise of gold market values during the 1930s, when Frank Murphy's widow sold out her interest.
In 1903, a man named Ben Bartlett recounted on his death bed that he had discovered the Congress in the early 1870s.
The scale of production was minimal; May used a simple arrastra to work a few tons of ore.[25][26][27][28][29] Later, May bought a farm near Buffalo, New York, but returned to prospect the Arizona desert, while Bartlett later became a laborer in the Congress mine.
[32][33][34] Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds died of pneumonia at the age of 71 on February 21, 1891, in his tent at the Congress Mine in Arizona.
[26][35] Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds had championed a railroad between Prescott and Phoenix, running through Congress, to reduce shipping costs to and from the mine.
Arms, Eliphalet Butler Gage, (a successful mine manager in Tombstone in the early days) as president, N.K.
[3][26][34] In 1900, it was reported that the Congress Mine had been sold again, this time to a syndicate headed by ex-Senator Warner Miller of New York for $3,000,000.
[26][41][42][43] In 1912 the bankrupt Development Company of America sold the Imperial to a mining conglomerate headed up by the Guggenheim family; the Tombstone Con to the Phelps Dodge Corporation; and the Christmas, Congress, and other properties to the Murphy interests.
