White Chief Mine
During 1876 the company three times assessed its stockholders. Each time, if the assessment was not paid, the stock was repossessed and resold by the company. The local prospectors who had traded their claims for stock soon found themselves being forced out unless they had additional cash to invest in the company. By the end of the year the New England Tunnel and Smelting Company had been locally renamed the "New England Thieving and Swindling Company."
The new year, 1877, brought little to improve the situation. Still short of funds, and now under new ownership as a result of the assessments, the company constructed a simple smelter to treat ores from the White Chief Mine. Arguments over operations, however, soon disclosed that the company was still not able to produce silver bullion from its ores. After a desperate special stockholders' meeting in early September, the New England Tunnel and Smelter Company filed for bankruptcy. Court-appointed management, under the control of the creditors, attempted to continue operations, but on February 18, 1878, a powerful avalanche destroyed the company's main facilities at the White Chief Mine. The thirty-by-sixty-foot bunkhouse, already straining under twenty feet of snow, was shattered. Miraculously, no one was killed, but operations were suspended until spring, and when spring came, the New England Company was dead. During the summer of 1878, only ten new claims were filed in the district.
