A few weeks ago a number of well-known residents of Butte left here on a prospecting expedition to the Big Hole country, says the Inter Mountain. Among the number were W. D. Clark and Thomas J. Howard. They are men of unimpeachable veracity, who number their friends by the hundreds in this city. This latter statement is perhaps made necessary by what is to follow. The gentlemen returned to Butte last evening, and to-day filed for record a location notice of the Catalpa lode claim, which the notice says is located three miles south of Divide station on Fleecer mountain, a portion of country that has not been prospected very thoroughly on account of the large amount of snow in that locality during the summer months. The remarkable part of the locating of this claim is the statement of the locators that they discovered a tunnel fully fifty feet long, which had been driven into the mountain apparently several years ago. In prospecting along the side of the mountain the men found several pieces of good-looking copper ore in a hollow which they first supposed had been a buffalo wallow in the days when those animals roamed the prairies of the Big Hole country. The prospectors, believing that there was a lead somewhere in the vicinity, began to dig in the mountain side. After an hour’s hard labor they were considerably surprised to find the earth suddenly yield to the blows of the pick and a big hole loom up before them. They cleared away the earth and entered a tunnel about six feet high and four feet wide, walled in with blocks of stone. The top of the tunnel was protected by large flat stones, and for about twenty-five feet there was not a break in the primitive timbering. About twenty-five feet from the mouth of this tunnel the prospectors came to a spot where the earth had apparently broken down the stonework, and after clearing away the debris the men were enabled to go in about twenty-five or thirty feet further. Here they came to a ledge, which was carefully examined, but as to what was discovered there the men will say nothing, except that they found some implements made of stone which had apparently been used in driving the tunnel.
[tags]Ann Arbor Register, August, 1895[/tags]