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to act as a firebreak. The adobes were built from the townsite's native
red clay and included rusted nails and blobs of half-molten glass from the
TO
two fires. ^
Calico silver mining was stimulated in late 1888 when the Oro Grande
Company finally laid a narrow gauge railroad from the Silver King and Water-
loo mines to the company mills at Daggett. The new railroad reduced the
haul to the mills from $2.50 to 12 cents per ton. 3

The mill at Daggett was a new, efficient, $250,000, 60-stamp affair.
It had begun in 1887, burned to the ground, and was rebuilt in time to service
ores from the new railroad. The mill fire, and then the second townsite
blaze, had been interpreted as Calico's death knolls by the Print, which
had by now closed shop.

In February/ 1889, the Oro Grande Mining Company sold its Calico in-
terests to another Wisconsin firm, the Waterloo Mining Company. In June
of that year, Mining Review reported that:

Of the annual silver product of California,
amounting now to about $3,000,000, seventy
percent comes from this county, most of it
from the Calico District. Owing to the
destruction by fire of several large mills
in Calico and neighboring districts, the
output of bullion has been much less in that
region of late than it otherwise would have
been. The low price of silver, coupled with
the impoverishment of the ores in the Calico
country having meantime tended to further
restrict production. *->

Silver mining was everywhere temporarily encouraged in 1890 with the
passage of two Congressional Acts, the Bland-Allison Act and the Sherman
Purchase Act, which allowed the Federal Government to purchase silver for
monetary use. The price of silver rose greatly, but the acts were soon
defeated. Nevertheless, the promise of revived bimetallism was a boon to
the Calico District until 1892. Production increased at all the working
mines, with, at one point, 700 men working in the district, 150 stamps opera-
ting in nulls, and $200,000 per month in bullion being produced. 6

In 1891, the Waterloo Mining Company built a branch of their railroad
line eastward to the ore bins of the Silver King Mine . This line serviced
both the Silver King and Waterloo mines, with a daily combined total of 150
tons of ore. At the same time, the Silver King Mining Company of London
was operating a 30-stamp mill with ore from its Odessa, Oriental, and
Occidental mines.

As silver mining was encouraged by the promise of bimetallism from 1890-
92, the steady production of borax in the Calico hills really began. William
T. Coleman and Company had acquired the richest borax areas in the 1880s, but
actual mining waited until Coleman was bought out in 1890 by Francis M. Smith.
Men from other Smith operations in Death Valley and Nevada were transferred
38
to the Calico hills.

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