Tombstone Arizona Original Pour 10 Oz Pure Silver Bar With Crucible & Amazing Provenance. Acquired through a private estate, through the Escapule family. Included is one 10 ounce .999 pure silver bar with the State of Maine Mining Co logo stamped on it. Also included is a printed copy of the existing flow sheet sketched by the Escapules during operation. Other papers involving this operation will be included. This is a paper printed by Bailey Escapule giving a detailed description of this process:

In 1982, I, Bailey Escapule, poured these silver bars in Tombstone, Arizona, at the State of Maine Mine. The process used to recover the silver involved cyanide heap leaching. The ore was crushed and put on a pad, then sprinkled with cyanide for 30 days. During this time, the gold and silver dissolved into a solution called a pregnant solution. The solution was then run through a clarification filter and an oxygen-reducing vacuum chamber. Zinc powder was added to the pregnant solution to precipitate the gold and silver into concentrates. These concentrates were dried and smelted into a dore cone of silver, gold, and other metals. The dore metal was further smelted into an anode plate. The electrolytic process used anode and cathode plates to produce .999 silver crystals. These crystals were then poured into 1-ounce and 10-ounce bars. Each bar is individually stamped with the exact weight, purity, and the State Of Main Mining Company logo. More of this estate will be listed in the coming weeks. Don't miss this opportunity to own a piece of real original Tombstone mining history! Thanks for looking!

The State of Maine Mine

John Escapule and his ties with the State of Maine Mine:

John Escapule was working in the State of Maine Mine at the end of the 1800's. Ernest B. Escapule was born there in May of 1896.

Sometime during this time, John Escapule was trapped in a drift in the mine after it caved in. The townspeople of Tombstone heard about the cave in and came out to the mine to dig him out. He told his son, Ernest Escapule, that was the longest and darkest nineteen hours he had ever spent in his life. I believe, Joe and John Jr. were also born at the mine.

John Escapule left the mine in 1900 and worked on building up the ranch from Tombstone to the San Pedro River. He worked on various mines around Tombstone until 1921. Then he and Harry Hasselgreen and another man leased the dumps at the State of Maine Mine from Phelps Dodge Mining Company. They constructed three 100 ton redwood vats. They crushed the dump material down to ½". They loaded this material into the vats and filled the vats with cyanide solution and let it set for forty eight hours. The bottom of the vats were lined with wood lattice and covered with burlap so the solution could drain out the bottom into a container filled with zinc shavings. The dissolved gold and silver in the solution precipitated out as a sludge. The sludge was mixed with flux and put into a furnace and melted down and poured into bars. These impure silver and gold bars were called dore. Now it was ready to be refined into silver and gold bullion. I don't believe they refined the dore into bullion. It was sold as a

dore.