Beck Mine, Ottawa County, Oklahoma, USAi

Regional Level Types
Beck Mine	Mine
Ottawa County	County
Oklahoma	State
USA	Country

The Beck Mine, Beck Mining Company, is located on an eighty-acre lease, comprising the S. ½ of the SW. ¼ of sec. 15, T. 29 N., R. 23 E. The west forty-acre lease was formerly operated as the St. Louis mine. The Beck mine, east forty acres, was started in 1919. The combined production developed on the eighty-acre lease, to the end of 1928, was 88,440 tons of zinc concentrates valued at $3,698,205 and 4,549 tons of lead concentrates valued at $460,810.

The underground workings of the west forty-acres were operated at two distinct levels. The stopes in the lower ore-body in the south part of the mine were worked at a level of 235 feet below the surface. The height of the stopes varied between ten and twenty feet, and the width from fifty to 150 feet. The stopes in the upper ore-body, in the central part of the forty-acres were mined to depths ranging from 175 to 193 feet below the surface. The stopes in the upper ore-body varied from ten to twenty feet in height and from twenty-five to one hundred in width.

The east forty acres have been mined mainly on the lower level at about 230 to 235 feet below the surface. The stopes have a usual height of ten to twenty-five feet, and a width of fifty to 150 feet. In some places small stopes at a higher level are being mined from raises and in other places the ore at the lower level is nearly continuous with that at the upper 190-foot level. An ore-body at the upper 190-foot level was being mined (August, 1929) from a new shaft northwest of the mill.

The ore-bearing formation is mainly “boulder ground” relatively “tight” rather than “open ground” especially at the lower level. The ore of the upper level, mainly lead ore, however, is usually in much fractured flint, the galena being in vertical as well as horizontal veins. The ore-body at the lower level on both the east and west forty-acre tracts follows the gentle dip of the strata to the west.

A cave located south of the mill shaft having flint walls lined with crystals of calcite has a lateral extension of twenty to thirty feet, and greatest height at the center of five or six feet. The shape and position of the cave opening (combined with the insoluble character of the flint walls) indicates its probable origin as due to arching and unequal settling of the strata associated with folding.

The shale thickness on the east side of the eighty-acre lease ranges from forty-five to sixty feet and on the west side from sixty to ninety feet. Below the shale is the usual thickness of twenty to forty feet of the Mayes formation overlying the flinty limestone of the Boone formation. The principal ore-level, at 230 feet, is apparently about 120 to 130 feet below the top of the Boone.