arizau
Bronze Member
- May 2, 2014
- 2,485
- 3,870
- Detector(s) used
- Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
- Primary Interest:
- Prospecting
My side of the mountain has no gold....or at least I thought so.
While researching known claimed areas on the opposite side of the "Sky Island" mountain range from where I live, I clicked on the Historical Mining Claims Activity button on http://www.mylandmatters.org/Maps/Mining.html and lo and behold there are two sections of land on my side of the mountains that showed closed placer claims. One section is basically inaccessible to the public since it is mostly private land and/or blocked by a gated community. The other section is N.F. but the canyon is mostly boulder hopping or a steep serious scramble. Since all the claims were only active for 3 or 4 years I'm sure they are not worth serious exploration but they are now in my memory bank since they are only about 5 miles away and I do have a lot of spare time.
Go figure......The other side of the relatively narrow range is a different story. It is highly mineralized with a noted Arizona gold district and almost next door to it is a now closed but once world class underground and open pit copper mine. It was primarily copper but they also had Gold and Silver at payable values in the milled concentrates so were credited for them. I think they also separated, concentrated and sold Molybdenum concentrates as we did at the mine where I worked. An interesting thing about that massive porphyry copper ore body is that it is faulted and actually the majority of the deposit has not been exploited since it lies deep below the mined area. The problem is that it is uneconomical to mine at today's copper prices.
Moral of the story.....don't forget to hit the button mentioned above when using Land Matters. Areas of closed claims still hold gold and may be worth your while to prospect.
Heavy pans.
While researching known claimed areas on the opposite side of the "Sky Island" mountain range from where I live, I clicked on the Historical Mining Claims Activity button on http://www.mylandmatters.org/Maps/Mining.html and lo and behold there are two sections of land on my side of the mountains that showed closed placer claims. One section is basically inaccessible to the public since it is mostly private land and/or blocked by a gated community. The other section is N.F. but the canyon is mostly boulder hopping or a steep serious scramble. Since all the claims were only active for 3 or 4 years I'm sure they are not worth serious exploration but they are now in my memory bank since they are only about 5 miles away and I do have a lot of spare time.
Go figure......The other side of the relatively narrow range is a different story. It is highly mineralized with a noted Arizona gold district and almost next door to it is a now closed but once world class underground and open pit copper mine. It was primarily copper but they also had Gold and Silver at payable values in the milled concentrates so were credited for them. I think they also separated, concentrated and sold Molybdenum concentrates as we did at the mine where I worked. An interesting thing about that massive porphyry copper ore body is that it is faulted and actually the majority of the deposit has not been exploited since it lies deep below the mined area. The problem is that it is uneconomical to mine at today's copper prices.
Moral of the story.....don't forget to hit the button mentioned above when using Land Matters. Areas of closed claims still hold gold and may be worth your while to prospect.
Heavy pans.
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