Page 12 - Traverse 50.3

Surveying in the Dark... continued from previous page
Still, James and Wrinkle were not without critics. It was reported that a
connection of the Savage Mine with the Sutro Tunnel was made by the
pair, and out of position by one foot. The Lyon County Times, a Silver City
newspaper, groaned about the “long winded puffs of James and Wrinkle,
the surveyors, because they were only one foot out of the way in a drift
270 feet in length.”. Presumably James and Wrinkle were happy with
the result, while the reporters in Silver City pointed out that a foot was
nothing to brag about and listed other imprecisions they alleged were
made by the pair. 13

In 1881, Ike James relocated to Arizona to take charge of the Conten-
tion Mine near Tombstone. In 1884, he became Superintendent at the
Carlisle Mine, in Silver City, New Mexico. But two years later James
resigned and returned to southern California, where he died in 1887.
By then, Wrinkle had hung out his own shingle as a U.S. Deputy Mineral
Surveyor. He surveyed claims around Tonopah, Bodie and points south.

The local newspapers regularly reported the filing of mining claims, etc.
In April of 1881, Wrinkle himself located a ledge in the Virginia Mining
Wrinkle’s map of the undergound in the Julia Lode,
Nevada Bureau of Mines District, which he called the “Porphyry Lode Claim”. He obtained several
patents for mineral land in Elko and Mineral Counties,
Nevada. In February of 1888, Wrinkle and his friend Gotth
Haist jointly located the “Valentine Claim” near Silver City.
In the winter of 1899, Wrinkle produced six mineral
surveys on the northeast flank of Candelaria Mountain, at
the mining camp of Candelaria, Nevada. There is nothing
remarkable about those surveys, Nos. 1886-1891, but his
choice of equipment is noteworthy.

Wrinkle preferred the Light Mountain Transit, manufac-
tured by A. Leitz & Company of San Francisco. This instru-
ment was lighter and more compact than the traditional Wrinkle’s advertisement, Walker Lake Bulletin,
Hawthorne, Nevada, Aug 13, 1884
engineer’s transit of the day and specifically designed for
mine or mountain work. Typically, these weighed about twelve pounds with the solar attachment, vertical arc and clamp, as advertised
in the Lietz Catalog.

They were used on “extension tripods”, those with adjustable legs, in a day
when stiff-legged tripods were the rule. They were prized for their portability
and flexibility in the mountains and underground.
Wrinkle’s transit was equipped with a Burt solar attachment, similar to those
used on the Burt Solar Compass. This allowed for the determination of astro-
nomical meridian by solar observation, although Wrinkle typically included a
star shot for azimuth. His field notes from the Candelaria surveys report, “The
courses were turned off from a true meridian line, determined by me from observa-
tion of Polaris at its upper culmination.”
Wrinkle’s notes also mention his use of the Grumman Patented Steel Chain.
This 33-foot chain was a novel improvement over the usual Gunter’s chain. Pat-
ented by Josiah M. Grumman in 1859, it was made from No. 18 tempered steel
wire making it lighter and stronger than iron chains. It used a circular eye at one
end and an oval eye on the other, so as to fold together more readily, thus dis-
pensing with extra rings typical of iron chains. There was a spring balance and a
level bubble on one end, for proper horizontal chaining at the right tension, and
a mercury thermometer on the other, together with a temperature adjustment
collar. All this was explained in Grumman’s paper, A Short Treatise on Surveyors’
Chains & Chain Measuring with the Subject of Measurements Generally, in the City
and Country, self-published in Brooklyn, New York in 1859.
L. F. J. Wrinkle, circa 1875

13 Lyon County Times, July 13, 1878, pg. 2
10 The Nevada Traverse Vol.50, No.2, 2023