Michael Cline’s recent “Photo of the Day” of Ray Mine selenite got me to thinking about the time I spent at the Ray Mine. In 1995, I was a young student geologist working there for the summer. Of course, being the budding mineralogist that I was (!) I was quite intrigued by the potential for enriching my own private collection. I was lucky, in that I had a relative who was a higher-up “muckety-muck” for ASARCO, who had the mine at the time (no pun inteded, either!) He found the job in the geological engineering department for me, and I proceeded to make my way to Kearny, Arizona, from my home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Housing near the mine was – no exaggeration – almost non-existant. The town of Kearny had a few hundred inhabitants, and was laid out like any other company town in the mining West – with the business district, such as it was, at the top of the hill, with the houses becoming smaller and closer together the closer one came to the valley bottom and the San Pedro river (absolutely beautiful, by the way) I remember looking at one place to rent which was, quite simply, a small run down, insect infested travel trailer on blocks down by the river. Just when I thought all was lost, I found a nice room, and room-mate, in some apartments on top of the hill with a fantastic view of the valley. But on to the minerals.
The Pearl Handle Pit was no longer being worked, but the geologist I worked with took me down into the pit. After scrambling down a few benches, we came to the shore – yes, the pit was full of water! Amazingly, Native Copper was seen poking out of the quartize all along the benches, and one had only to break the rock apart to pull out large, cabinet-sized pieces of beautiful crystalline copper. The geologist had small piles here and there, which he tapped whenever he needed some copper for visitors or whatever. I cannot overemphasize how rich this area was – in under an hour, I took out about a hundred pounds of quite nice native copper - and never had the chance to go back again! That’s okay, though, because the chalcotrichite needed to be collected!
In mapping part of the mine between the silicate orebody and the Poorman Area, chalcotrichite began to show up. It was exciting because it had not been seen in a long time. I remember kicking a piece of rock, then looking at it and saying “Hey, what the hell is this?” Picking it up showed an 8 or 9 centimeter surface coated with fine red fibers – needless to say it was exciting! Over the next week, I managed to pull out about twenty flats of very fine chalcotrichite, red felt up to 4 or 5 millimeters thick coating faces up to 10 centimeters across, many of the pieces with small dendritic groups of native copper or scattered with tiny calcite crystals – absolutely stunning! Eventually, however, the mine’s contract dealer caught on and the stuff began showing up in his shop in Globe.
Another time, the geologist and I drove over to the West Pit area and collected selenite crystals. They were large – up to 6 inch – crystals, as twins, laying flat on a clay matrix. They occurred in one of the West Pit faults and collecting them was hazardous, to say the least. Also from the area were small sprays of selenite needles, with azurite pseudos of calcite to a centimeter and radiating malachite needles – all on native copper! I have NEVER seen one of these for sale and wonder what happened to the few I saw! I had two of them, without the selenite, and miss them dearly! Another hazardous mineral to collect was malachite, in nodules up to 4 centimeters across. It also occurred in veins, which could be traced up two of three benches. Why was it hazardous? Because the silicate orebody at the time was not being mined and was full of water – acid actually – which was being blown into the air by a sprinkler system to evaporate the water – the malachite was in the walls of this pit full of acid!
There were a couple of other mineral collecting experiences which I will never forget. While mapping at the top of the Poorman area, I often came across fault gouges entirely filled with groups of calcite scalenohedrons to a over a centimeter, with pyrite, sprays of selenite needles and laumontite – quite unusual for Ray. I also found beautiful chrysocolla, with tenorite and apophyllite. Occassionally one would find libethinite or dioptase in fantastic micros, though these were hard to find at the time. On one occasion, driving up to the Poorman area, I saw a huge overhanging piece of rock from a becnh above, coated with a mineralization of many colors. Over a period of weeks, as pieces dropped to the ground below, I collected rock coated with 2 -3 mm azurite rosettes, malachite needles and siderite balls – what fun!
I have since sold my Ray Mine collection, though I would buy it back in a minute if given the chance, but the memories of copper minerals, which I never paid much attention to until Ray, will remain always. That summer, I also hiked in to the 79 Mine area, as well as collected wulfenite pseudos at the Finch Mine. What memories!!!!

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