General Location: NW1/4 SE1/4 sec. 36 T. 89 N. R. 2 E.
Description:
Indian Guide Mine derives its name from the father-son group sponsored by the YMCA called the Indian Guides. When I was quite young my dad and I belonged to this group and one of the first outings that we went on we cooked our beans and wieners over a campfire at the entrance to this mine. As kids we got to look into the entrance and that was my first experience with the lead mines of Dubuque. The east entrance to the mine is at the west end of a long trench dug by the early miners as surface workings. At the area of the trench cap rock was eroded away leaving the top of the crevice as part of the soil horizon. This was actively worked possibly by Julian Dubuque and his contemporaries. At the west end of the trench or the entrance to Indian Guide Mine cap rock was present forcing the miners to remove rock or go underground to obtain the galena. Going underground they simply removed the loose fill in the crevice below cap rock, took the fill to the outside and sorted out the cog ore. They sunk shafts probably more for light and air ventilation than anything else at short intervals. Two such shafts are noted on the map while a third shaft now collapsed forms the west entrance. Forty feet west of that was an adit entrance which was collapsed prior to 1950s. The dump on the hillside below this adit contained a fair amount of cog galena attesting to the inefficiency of the methods. The crevice, which the mine follows, is formed by two nearly parallel running east-west joints. This is the same crevice that is intersected at the end of Boneyard Cave.
The Brown and Whitlow Map does not indicate the existence of either the adits or shafts but does note mineral holes or 'lead pits' at the site. MF116 does note the trench but does not locate the shafts or adits. On the Whitney Map are noted two crevices, Hamilton and O'Brian at the approximate site of Indian Guide Cave.
The cave was buried during subdivision construction in the 1990's though portions of the trench to east of the cave can still be seen.
Bibliography: