Belle and Jim handled the rush that followed a rich mineral discovery by leasing parts of their claim, the richest of all, to eager prospectors, who measured the ground they chose to excavate at three feet per step and marked it with rocks. The Butlers made no written contracts, relying instead on verbal agreements for 25% of the profits each lease produced in a one-year period, and entered the names in a notebook. Early miners dug the stope here in 1900-1901, going down 100 feet for ore and using timbers to keep the hole from collapsing, while later mining extended the stopes to 500 feet, the full depth of the ore body. Historian Carl Glasscock wrote that leasers took four million dollars worth of ore from Tonopah without any written proof of their claims.