The first report of copper in this area reached the wider world after Texas Rangers returned from an 1860 campaign against Comanches on the Pease River, about 100 miles to the northwest. Ranger Captain Lawrence S. ("Sul") Ross later had nuggets picked from the ground surface and hauled to Austin, and in 1861 Assistant State Geologist S.B. Buckley charted the mineral site. Ore from the Rangers' haul was processed and used in gun caps for Confederate forces during the Civil War. Seeking more of the needed metal, the Texas Copper Mining & Manufacturing Company was founded on May 28, 1864, but a wartime shortage of men apparently prevented copper recovery then. Based in Dallas, the company sent W.F. Cummings to Archer County in 1880 to open mining sites. Although the Texas Commissioner of Agriculture and Statistics reported in 1882 that no mining had begun, ore was eventually hauled out and shipped to smelters in the east. No central vein or deposit was found. In 1899 the Boston & Texas Copper Company of Tucson, Ariz., leased the mine site here and produced some copper ore for processing in El Paso, but the project again failed to meet expectations.