{ title: 'The Great Falls Leader (Great Falls, Mont.) 1888-1900, March 25, 1890, Page 22, Image 22', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about Chronicling America - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn86075267/1890-03-25/ed-1/seq-22.png', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn86075267/1890-03-25/ed-1/seq-22.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn86075267/1890-03-25/ed-1/seq-22/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn86075267/1890-03-25/ed-1/seq-22/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
About The Great Falls Leader (Great Falls, Mont.) 1888-1900 | View This Issue
The Great Falls Leader (Great Falls, Mont.), 25 March 1890, located at <http://montananewspapers.org/lccn/sn86075267/1890-03-25/ed-1/seq-22/>, image provided by MONTANA NEWSPAPERS, Montana Historical Society, Helena, Montana.
2 0 G R E A T F A L L S A N D E N V I R O N S . sheets of his annual report to the state, the following synopsis relat ing particularly to the Sand Coulee coal : ‘ ‘ The Sand Coulee coal field is situated about twelve miles south of Great Falls and the mouth of Sun river, and near several falls of the Missouri, in the midst of the best agricultural region of the great northwest, where there is sufficient water power to run the machinery of a continent, and in the vast prairie country extending from the Eocky Mountains to the forests of Minnesota, 800 miles, and from the Dominion to the gulf of Mexico, with no timber save in a few places, scarcely sufficient for temporary local uses. And in this vast prairie country no coal mines are so well fitted to supply all these varied wants as those of Sand Coulee. The coal is abundant, and it possesses the properties needed for the various uses above named. It is clean and strong and makes a warm, cheerful fire for the home; it makes good gas and coke; it is a good steam generator; it is an excellent fuel for the ovens and furnaces of reduction works; and it is better situated for cheap mining and transportation than any coal in Montana. Quality of the Sand Coulee Coal. ‘ ‘ Some persons have called this coal a lignite because it is found in a formation which contains beds of lignite; but this is as true a bituminous coal as can be found on the continent. Like the ‘ block coals ’ of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, so much used in smelting furnaces without coking, it contains numerous thin layers of charcoal, which prevent the coal from caking and choking the fur nace. In fact, the Sand Coulee coal bed is made up of three vari eties of coal; a jet black variety with shining resinous luster and an even or conchoidal fracture, which makes a first-class coke; a dull dry variety with little bitumen, and mineral charcoal with very little bitumen, all more or less interstratified. The bright coking coal is most abundant toward the bottom, the dull dry coal prevails in the upper part of the bed, and the charcoal partings in the middle part. 1 ‘ I have had a number of analyses made of each of these vari eties of coal by Prof. J. T. Gove, of the 4 Utah assay office,’ in Helena, and by Prof. Frank W. Traphagen, of the College of Mon tana, at Deer Lodge. 41 The coking coal has a shining resinous luster and breaks with an even or conchoidal fracture. The average of two analyses made by the above-named experts, gave—the first in the following table: Sand Coulee Coal. Connells- ville Coal. Pittsburg Coal. Specific gravity ............... ............................... 1.24 1.28 1.25 Water, at 212 cleg. F ........... ......................... 3.98 4.50 3.00 Gas or volatile matter.................................. 33.15 24.00 33.76 Fixed carbon .................................................. 57.05 65.00 54.93 Ash, white ...................................................... 5.83 6.50 7.07 62.00 78.12 Coke.................................................................. 62.88 71.50 Weight per cubic foot ................................. 77.50 80.00 ‘ ‘ The above table shows the ingredients of the bright coking part of the Sand Coulee coal, together with the very celebrated Con- nellsville coal of Pennsylvania, so esteemed for making coke for foundry uses, and the well known Pittsburg coal, so generally used in the gas works of the country. The analysis of the Connellsville coal is taken from the geological report of Indiana for 1875, and the analysis of the Pittsburg coal from the report on the coals of America to the Secretary of the Navy, by Walter R. Johnson. “ By a comparison of these analyses it will appear that this Sand Coulee coking coal as closely resembles these two most celebrated coals of America as two specimens of coal from the same bed resem ble each other. This variety of the Sand Coulee coal is almost iden tical with the celebrated Connellsville coking coal. This and the several practical tests in coking this coal show it to be a good coking coal. I have three specimens of excellent coke, two made from the Sand Coulee coal and the other from the Belt Creek coal, which is identically the same, as both mines are in the same coal bed, and no expert can distinguish the coals from the two localities. Many experts declare this an excellent coking coal. “ The most striking resemblances between the Pittsburg coal and this variety of the Sand Coulee coal are in the amount of gas, the specific gravity and the fixed carbon, showing this shining variety of the Sand Coulee coal will make about the same amount of gas and coke as the Pittsburg coal. “ The dull, dry variety of Sand Coulee coal has a dull, even or conchoidal fracture; and the charcoal shows the grain and pores of
Page
All Pages
