Tell me about the minerals

[Clay Diggins]

This is for all the dedicated researchers out there. Tell me about the mineralization in this area.

Your challenge, should you choose to play, is to describe to us what minerals worth mining are where in this map area. I'm hoping those who use "satellite" photos (actually aerial photos from a low flying plane) and other forms of "remote sensing" will put their two cents in, I'd like to hear your results and reasoning.

Here's your map link.

I know this area like the back of my hand so if you think you can use the MRDS or regular geology mapping I'll give you a heads up - they are wrong.

This is a well known and heavily mined area. There are several mineral patents for different mineral deposits in this rough cube just four miles on a side. You might be able to figure out what's going on here from those patents or any other method you like. Just please tell us what research methods you used.

This is not a trick or an invitation for some members to take threads off track. Just make your best guess and put it out there. This is not a contest. There are no winners or losers just folks willing to learn from others - myself included.

Heavy Pans

 

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[goldenIrishman]

Is that the area between Morristown and Wickenburg Clay? I've been through there but since I was driving I couldn't do much looking thanks to the fools on the road that day.

 

[chlsbrns]

This is for all the dedicated researchers out there. Tell me about the mineralization in this area.

Your challenge, should you choose to play, is to describe to us what minerals worth mining are where in this map area. I'm hoping those who use "satellite" photos (actually aerial photos from a low flying plane) and other forms of "remote sensing" will put their two cents in, I'd like to hear your results and reasoning.

Here's your map link.

I know this area like the back of my hand so if you think you can use the MRDS or regular geology mapping I'll give you a heads up - they are wrong.

This is a well known and heavily mined area. There are several mineral patents for different mineral deposits in this rough cube just four miles on a side. You might be able to figure out what's going on here from those patents or any other method you like. Just please tell us what research methods you used.

This is not a trick or an invitation for some members to take threads off track. Just make your best guess and put it out there. This is not a contest. There are no winners or losers just folks willing to learn from others - myself included.

Heavy Pans

I'll take you up on this one except your challenge should you decide to play is that I show you a pic of the area and have you tell me what is there.

About the middle of the pic, where it shows a yellow marker just above Morristown... is about the center of the area that you choose.

What minerals are at any of the red and white flasks.

The flasks and other markers link to USGS files showing a complete analysis of the soils at each location. The files take us right to where we want to be!

 

[Clay Diggins]

Jeff that area is just north and west of Morristown.

I added roads and cities to the map so you can zoom out and see the area in relation to areas you might know.

This area is smack dab in the southern Arizona goldfields. About the center of the triangle formed by the Little San Domingo, the Constellation mine and the Vulture mine. The big wash down the center is the Hassayampa river. The territory is rough but accessible. Lots of mining roads dating back to the 1870's. A lot of this area can be seen from Hwy 60 including large working placer mines operating since the 1940's and earlier.

Some of the finest florescent minerals specimens in the world are found within the initial map view as well as some very productive mines. Many different metals including gold, silver, copper etc.

I've seen thousands of sunsets across these mountains. It's a beautiful area that still produces world class nuggets every year. Even the greenest newbie can find gold, copper, beryl, tourmaline and a whole lot more within this one map area.

Interested yet?

Heavy Pans

 

[Nitric]

That looks like a cool place to explore! I read the first post then went net searching to take whatever I could find. Looked up the county then went backwards. I thought I was reading about Venture mine, then when I went to search more on it, all I could find was vulture mine in the area. Then got into reading about Geodes I'm guessing East of there, west of lake W...Something(I think)Anyhow, I got side tracked and kept reading about all the cool stuff in that area surrounding your map link.. then you had the answer when I finally made it Back.

 

[Clay Diggins]

That's a good start Nitric!

The Vulture Mine was the largest gold mine in Arizona for 70 years. It was discovered in 1863 and has a long history. Today the Vulture is the best preserved of the early west mines and is once again producing commercially. Most Saturdays you can get a guided tour of the old mine buildings and town.

There is plenty of open ground to prospect just outside the mine area that will produce small gold with every bucket. Nuggets up to a few ounces are still occasionally found in the desert around the mine. The Vulture area is not known for a lot of large gold like our subject area but there is plenty of small gold that is easily drywashed. The Vulture mine is a hardrock underground mine but there is a lot of small placer throughout the immediate area. Here's a topo map of the Vulture mine workings. You can zoom out to see where this is in relation to our subject area to the east.

The Vulture mine is only about 4 miles as the crow flies to the east of the center of the area we are studying. Although it is close there is no easy direct access because the Vulture Mountain is in the way. There are no direct routes over that mountain. You can see why that's a problem in this picture.


The geodes you read about are a short way up the road to Constellation mine just outside of Wickenburg.They are easily collected from the surface just off the road. If you ever make it out this way and want to hunt geodes I can give you directions. The lake you were reading about is Lake Pleasant. The lake is man made and covers a very productive placer area. Until the dam was "improved" there were several commercial placer operations upstream from the lake, those are now underwater.

All of these features are near our subject area and within a short drive from Phoenix. There have been people mining these areas since the 1860's and new discoveries are still being made. The area that's the subject of this thread has a huge potential for serious prospectors. It's one of the less explored areas in the last several decades.

I'll share more information soon. In the meantime keep up the research.

Heavy Pans

 

[goldenIrishman]

It is a very beautiful area for sure Clay. While driving through on trips back and forth to Douglas I wanted to stop and do some exploring. Alas the truck and trailer were packed to the gills and time didn't allow for any spur of the moment explorations. I didn't even have time to stop by and invite you for a cold one! I'll tie into some research in that area here shortly. As usual I've got lots of irons in the fire. Oh.... Are you wanting only minerals of commercial value or does anything go?

 

[winners58]

I see signs of erosion caused by dihydrogen monoxide but looks safe now, not a drop in sight.
some of what I've read is that the area was kept open to mining during the war
was for manganese and molybdenum. It does intrigue me that the area that is zoomed into
of the river bed in that sector is that they are all Lode claims.

 

[Clay Diggins]

More hint words to help research this area. Check out this page. The words on the left of that page might help your research.

If you download the mine map on that page you will understand better why Donna made those 14 lode claims in that section Winners. (Be prepared for some headstands)

Heavy Pans

 

[Clay Diggins]

Just to the South of the map area was the mill for the Vulture mine. The mill was built by James Seymour who had purchased the "worked out" Vulture mine in 1878. The mill had 40 stamps and the ore was hauled by muletrain about 12 miles over rough terrain to this spot on the Hassayampa river. By any standards a 40 stamp mill was a big operation that required a lot of labor and water. The mill created a town of it's own.

The millsite town was called Seymore. Seymore had about 230 residents, a store, two saloons, a hotel, a restaurant, butcher, barber and feed yard. It was a major stop on the stagecoach line. The water source for the town and mill was the Hassayampa sink a few miles upriver which today is a nature preserve. You can see the "sink" just north of the initial map view. The Hassaympa sink is still a beautiful lush green area on a normally dry desert river.

During those years the town of Vulture, along with Jerome, Bisbee and Prescott were the centers of commerce in the Arizona Territory. Seymore was destined to become a major town in Arizona but for one thing. In 1890 it was wiped off the face of the earth in one of the greatest disasters in Southwest history.

The Hassayampa river, along it's course from the high Bradshaw mountains, passes through some of the richest gold fields in the southwest. On the upper end more than 90 miles upstream from Seymore placer mining was big business in the mountains. In 1888 a large dam was constructed in Walnut Grove to provide water for the hydraulic and placer operations in that area of the Bradshaw mountains.



Almost exactly 126 years ago on February 22, 1890 after a lot of rain the Walnut Grove dam broke and sent a 100 foot high wall of water rushing down the Hassayampa river. At least 120 people were killed along the river that night, mostly miners. By the time the flood reached Wickenburg 70 miles down river the wall of water was still 40 foot high. That night Seymore was obliterated along with many other small mining communities along the river.

Today the Seymore town site has no roads leading to it. It's a very difficult place to find. All that is left is the concrete pad where the incoming gold ore from the Vulture mine was stored for processing at the mill. The night of the flood there were more than 20 tons of that gold ore stacked on the pad, all was washed away downstream.

Seymore, Smiths Mill, Allah and many more mining towns, all near the map area, are no more but their history holds valuable information for the modern prospector researching potential rich areas. Although Seymore and the other places already mentioned in this thread provide good information the mapped area I offered has even greater treasures.

It's still out there and I'm offering a pointy finger for those willing to do the research.

Heavy Pans

 

[Nitric]

I like this thread! And I'm coming back to it as soon as I get some time to sit and look at everything I can find! So, I might be late in this game! I'm still green so it may take me a little while to come up with something.

In the mean time I had a few thoughts and a question!

Is there a specific spot in the image that holds something? Maybe something exposed from erosion or would this be something deeper and way more complicated than that? If someone was walking on foot would it be noticed by any kind of indicators?

I'm still fairly new to this stuff and I was thinking about this thread today while I was driving around. I also had a thought of.... "what would be there that earlier people have missed?" And why did the earlier explorers miss it? Price or cost? Not needed at that time? Or just out of "character" for the norm? Etc....

Those are thoughts for now! I do want to come back to this when I have time and do some of my own research just to see if I can figure anything out on my own. Sounds fun!! Can't wait for time to sit and try to figure it out!

 

[Clay Diggins]

There are a lot of visual indicators on the ground Nitric. I'll put up a post later with some pictures to describe what you might want to look for.

That bigger wash coming in to the riverbed on the east side is the Little San Domingo. That wash is famous for it's placer gold. Most people prospect the Little San Domingo several miles upstream on the other side of the highway.

A smart researcher would have discovered that a churn drilling project took place in the spring of 1962. That drilling was done all the way up the Little San Domingo bed to the patent where the dam was. The gold values downstream of the highway were more than twice the gold values where everybody prospects to this day. Research pays off in gold.

Near the mouth of the Little San Domingo there are Lepidolite deposits. Lepidolite is an ore of Lithium. Lithium prices have more than doubled in the last year. Interestingly this Lepidolite fluoresces yellow under longwave uv light. Read more about the Lithium market here. Research pays off in valuable minerals.

Check out the links. I'm sure you will find them interesting. Hopefully they will give you some new research tools. You will need all the tools you can get to discover the real treasure of the map area. I've given you some hints in this post but the mineral treasures on the map are still to be found. I'll post more when I have the time.

Have you got a birthday party planned for the little one next week Nitric? Take pictures if you can - they only get one first birthday. The time will whizz by, enjoy it while you can.

Heavy Pans

 

[Lanny in AB]

Clay,

Thanks for taking the time to put together this thread!

It's a fun place to stop and put the brain in gear for a while.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Nitric]

There are a lot of visual indicators on the ground Nitric. I'll put up a post later with some pictures to describe what you might want to look for.

That bigger wash coming in to the riverbed on the east side is the Little San Domingo. That wash is famous for it's placer gold. Most people prospect the Little San Domingo several miles upstream on the other side of the highway.

A smart researcher would have discovered that a churn drilling project took place in the spring of 1962. That drilling was done all the way up the Little San Domingo bed to the patent where the dam was. The gold values downstream of the highway were more than twice the gold values where everybody prospects to this day. Research pays off in gold.

Near the mouth of the Little San Domingo there are Lepidolite deposits. Lepidolite is an ore of Lithium. Lithium prices have more than doubled in the last year. Interestingly this Lepidolite fluoresces yellow under longwave uv light. Read more about the Lithium market here. Research pays off in valuable minerals.

Check out the links. I'm sure you will find them interesting. Hopefully they will give you some new research tools. You will need all the tools you can get to discover the real treasure of the map area. I've given you some hints in this post but the mineral treasures on the map are still to be found. I'll post more when I have the time.

Have you got a birthday party planned for the little one next week Nitric? Take pictures if you can - they only get one first birthday. The time will whizz by, enjoy it while you can.

Heavy Pans

Yes! Thank you! He will be one next week! All the rough stuff is behind! Everything turned out great! And Mom has been taking pictures everyday!(not joking!)

That is interesting about the lithium! I tried to research it(a little) a few years back. It's an interesting metal!

 

[Hefty1]

zeolite clinoptilolite

 

[Nitric]

Still looking......... I guess I'd be a bad prospector!

Wait a minute!! Clay! How did the Lithium get there? Was what I went looking for. These may be stupid questions. I'm learning slowly in random directions! I read that some lithium deposits were left by Saline? So, an earlier thought might not have been too far out there. But what else is carried and deposited that way?

Just stuff I was wondering and trying to understand. If saline carried the Lithium, and if that's how it was deposited, what else could be deposited by saline? That's where I'm at now....

 

[kcm]

Would be a great game to play if it weren't for the data cap on my internet.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Still looking......... I guess I'd be a bad prospector!

Wait a minute!! Clay! How did the Lithium get there? Was what I went looking for. These may be stupid questions. I'm learning slowly in random directions! I read that some lithium deposits were left by Saline? So, an earlier thought might not have been too far out there. But what else is carried and deposited that way?

Just stuff I was wondering and trying to understand. If saline carried the Lithium, and if that's how it was deposited, what else could be deposited by saline? That's where I'm at now....

Nix the saline idea Nitric and think Pegmatite!

The alkali is about a group of base metals that when exposed to acid form metal salts. Lithium (the lightest of the solid elements) does that because it's got a really unstable atomic structure. Pure lithium doesn't exist in nature because it rapidly oxidizes (burns) and gives up it's free electron (crashes into a cation). So it's not salt that forms Lithium but Lithium forms metallic salts. This isn't the kind of salt you would put on your food (the salt of the metal element sodium) but you might want to put some on your crazy Aunt Charlene's cereal.

The lithium we are talking about here is bound up (compounded) with Mica (a form of sheet silicates). Some micas when they bind with the metallic salt Lithium form the mineral Lepidolite. Lepidolite itself is a pretty cool rock, I've got some nice pieces here on the desk in front of me, but the really exciting part is the other things you find in pegmatites that have exotic stuff like Lithium in their composition. A lot of the rarer lighter metals survive as minerals in pegmatites when they would just be cooked off in the dryer, hotter magmatic intrusions like granites. Stuff like beryllium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, barium, aluminum, boron, fluorine, niobium, tantalum, uranium, and rare earths will be found in pegmatite but not in granite in any abundance.

Very large crystals and gems are common in the pegmatites here. Just a few miles to the east of this spot some of the largest crystals in the world are just hanging around for clever rock nuts to see. One of the largest is over 300 foot long and mostly exposed on an easily seen hillside near White Picacho peak. There are Beryls, various Tourmalines and even more exotic gems associated with these pegmatite dikes and sills.

Beryl alone has several valuable gems.
Aquamarine - Blue/green variety of beryl.
Blue Beryl (Maxixe) - Deep blue beryl.
Emerald - Deep green variety of a beryl.
Goshenite - Colorless variety of beryl.
Heliodor - Yellow variety of beryl.
Morganite - Pink variety of beryl.
Red Beryl - A red gem variety of beryl, also known as 'bixbite',
Riesling Beryl - A strongly dichroic (pale green / golden yellow) beryl.
Vorobyevite - A caesium-bearing variety of beryl.

The Tourmaline here is mostly Elbaite (green) and Schorl (black) but the crystals tend to be huge and very numerous. Schorl in quartz is everywhere scattered on the ground and in the rock faces. But since there is Lepidolite and the other lighter metals there is always the possibility of finding much rarer Tourmalines.

Lithium has it's own rare and beautiful gemstone Spodumene - also found in this area. Notice that all these beautiful minerals have very light metal elements as a considerable portion of their makeup. That's the result of the pegmatites being the last and most hydrous of the magmas to form. Faster cooling with water and light elements creates a lot of the most interesting and valuable rocks and minerals along with very large crystals. Pegmatites also create great conditions for alteration zones that encourage secondary enrichment mineralization like deposits of zinc, lead, copper, silver and gold.

Around here the phrase "dike swarm" creates a lot of excitement that has nothing to do with the goings on in San Francisco. The area we are looking at is surrounded by dikes, sills and dike swarms. Prospectors paradise for those who can decipher the riddles of these complex interactive mineral deposits.

Rather than looking to a geology map to discover where these treasures are studying the mineral deposits and the conditions that create them will give you a much better understanding of just where that treasure might be.

You are on the right track. Keep looking at the specifics until a bigger picture forms. You might find yourself kicking a 10 pound tourmaline crystal out of the way to get to the gold nuggets underneath as so many have here done. Keep looking the treasure is there.

kcm I tried to give you links to make your research bandwidth lighter. I hope that helps you play the game with the rest of us.

Heavy Pans

 

[kcm]

Thanks CD - been doing lots of extra research this month, not to mention looking up parts for the truck, plus the Verizon box on the fritz! They sent a new box out, but haven't been able to get to the mailbox until today - too much flooding.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Back in the late 90's I spent some time consulting at a lithium processing facility in western NC. It was on the site of a spodumene mine. They were no longer digging there but I did get a nice sample of the ore.

My point? There's lithium ore in its most collectible form within hours of where you live and it may be closer too