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GeneralAccuracy of mine locations

19th Jul 2014 23:26 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Today my wife and I drove a nice little scenic tour around the Huachuca mountains in Southeastern Arizona. I took some photos of mines I am aware of in the area and when I checked all the p's and q's before posting the photos I found a few things that were quite off base.

The particular mine I had problems with is the Alto Mine in the Huachuca Mts. I looked at the mine symbol for the mine on the map pages and where they showed it there is absolutely nothing. I went to the satellite photo maps and found the exact mines I had the photos of. The mine description for the Alto mine matches my photo and the shafts described on the Alto page exactly. Only the mine symbol is about half a mile to the East.

This is not the only time I have come across this. I don't know what is not right, sometimes I think the GPS coordinates people give are totally wrong. Don't know if the technology doesn't work well or if it is people error but I have seen this same thing often.

I wonder how many others have found the same thing?

I wanted to post another photo of a Tombstone mine but ran into a problem there as well. The mine I have a photo of is totally different than the photos posted for the mine on mindat. Someone has photos of this mine but they don't match at all what I have found by going there.

I want to be accurate with my postings but run into this discrepancy of location, symbols and coordinates too often.

Rolf Luetcke

19th Jul 2014 23:35 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

A lot of data was taken from MRDS and that was either incorrect to begin with or not converted correctly when imported into mindat. It's difficult to fix in bulk - we need to rely on people telling us what is wrong and giving us the right coordinates.

20th Jul 2014 00:49 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

My own measurements for various sites in SoCal show that half mile errors in the MRDS are not at all uncommon :-(

But that's OK... If finding mines were toooooo easy, it would take all the fun and adventure out of it :-D

20th Jul 2014 01:08 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

I will have to see if I can figure out some of the ones that I know are wrong and if I do get the correct information I will forward it on.

Yes, Alfredo, my wife Mary says the same thing, it would make it too easy.

Rolf

20th Jul 2014 02:04 UTCGeorg Graf

Hi Rolf,

a mine can cover a great area; with more than one shaft, more than one adit, an administative building, more than one dressing plant. Because of this more than one set of coordinates is possible. - Hope, this helps a bit.

Gg

20th Jul 2014 02:31 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager

It can be difficult to properly locate some mines, in some cases the location is given as the main adit or shaft, which can end up just being right in a corner of the mine lease, in some cases we give the centroid of the mine lease or group of workings that can cover a square km or so, and sometimes its given as the centroid of main deposit, which can be 100's of metres from the main adit. And sometimes its totally lost in the bush and you make a wild guess based on the scanty information available. If only we had time to go out and locate them all, but sometimes you can spend a day bush-bashing and find nothing!

20th Jul 2014 03:53 UTCDoug Daniels

It was a room full of monkeys throwing darts at a map.... Unless there was a definite survey taken, to a specific point, which was recorded, ... it can all be iffy. With GPS, maybe the powers-that-be have the coordinates thrown off for a reason....(look at the current world situation). Just trying to be cheerful....

20th Jul 2014 04:05 UTCWaterDog

Many of the older mine records were located in Public Land Survey System township, range, and section. When the databases were brought into GIS systems the mine locations were placed at the center points of quarter sections or even the center points of sections where quarter section info wasn't recorded. If a mine is located toward the edge of a section the conversion error can be up to a half mile from this alone. Add datum shifts (NAD 27 to NAD 83 or WGS 84 is about a 70m shift in Arizona) and conversion errors get worse.

20th Jul 2014 04:12 UTCJim Gawura

Rolf,

I've found that the MRDS can wayyyy off. A few years ago when the Geocommunicator mine sight was up you could access different databases. Different ones showed the mine in different locations. So much for old data. You might think you were looking at two or more shafts, but in fact it was the same mine showing different locations with different databases. Another problem is that a lot of mines changed names. They were bought and sold and what was the name when the database was recorded is another mystery. There were also a good amount of other shafts, adits, pits, and trenches that were never listed as to ownership but were in close proximity with other well known mines, they are usually listed as prospects, but may not be in any database. I try to use all the info I can find on the internet to have a name and location for a mine, but sometimes it turns into a thankless job with no good answers. Old records of even major mines can be woefully lacking, even with state records.Then to make matters worse I find different websites that list names and locations that I know through research to be totally erroneous, but are on the web forever. Your example of the mine not being where it was supposed to be is one of the wonders of the internet. Thank you Google Maps.

Cheers,

Jim

20th Jul 2014 16:57 UTCMark Willoughby Expert

Howdy all,

Here in South Australia, the SARIG database now has an 'accuracy rating' for mine co-ordinates. It basically states how far from the mine (in metres), the co-ordinates 'may' or 'may not' be.

In addition to what Ralph mentioned, the accuracy (or in-accuracy) of these is often a result of notes, records and estimation based on these. While most are quite accurate, I know so some with ratings as high as 200m, which in many countries would seem like a huge distance, where as here in Australia, 200m is often not even the distance between two shafts or adits, let alone the entire mine lease.

To give a really good idea, when the Olympic Dam expansion finally goes ahead, we are possibly looking at an open pit mine anywhere up to 7km long, by 5 km wide, so 200m is almost nothing!

:-)

20th Jul 2014 17:01 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.

This is a particularly vexing problem. Many of our coordinates were imported from the USGS MRDS database. That database is a consolidation of USGS records and the old MAS MILS database of the former U.S. Bureau of Mines. The latter source used the Public Land Survey System (T&R system) more than the geographic coordinates. I often find more than 1 MRDS file per locality. I have found as many as 5 for a single mine. Many times one file will document another as also pertaining to the same locality. Other times one file will document another MRDS file as relevent when, in fact, it has nothing whatsoeve to do with it. Many times there are multiple files and none among them referencing any other. Often these files present data which do not agree. At times, the disparities are significant.

As many of you know, I have been working on all the files for California and have worked on all the files for Arizona (I intend to revisit the Arizona files with some new tools at my disposal). In many of the California files you will find notes describing the disparities and errors which I found and my attempts at resolving the conundrums through analyses of the data, in total. I often have to bump the data in MRDS files against the topo maps. Many times I am successful and some times the puzzles are just too much to solve.

We have had some very valuable assistance from our contributors who have taken GPS readings at the mines (shaft collars or adit portals, building foundations), and recorded those in the Mindat files. Whenever this is done, the contributor(s) should make an entry into the description block of the locality file stating that this was done, who did it, what GPS device was used, the reference point of the mine (e.g., adit portal), and the date the readings were taken. Don't be shy - take credit and let the world know your contribution!! It also helps if someone searches out a mine and finds nothing at the alleged site. These data should also be recorded in the Mindat locality file as a matter-of-fact, impersonal entry (e.g.: On 12 July, 2014, John Anybody attempted to locate this site and found no traces of any mining or prospecting activity at the coordinates provided or anywhere within 500 meters of that point).

All in all, due to the collective efforts of the Mindat community, Mindat probably has the most accurate database as a whole. Since we are undoubtedly more accurate than the MRDS database due to the many corrections to its data that we have made, that make us the most accurate.There are many inaccuracies, and always will be. Our goal is to minimize them. All assistance in this regard is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Chet Lemanski

24th Jul 2014 17:43 UTCWilliam W. Besse Expert

OK, yes I have found errors, commonly typos. I have corrected these on Mindat and try to annotate the record as to why I have corrected it so somebody does not "correct" my correction.

But that said, in most cases the USGS, who is responsible for MRDS, does not care about the location of your mine shaft or other mining artifact. They are interested in the location of "discovery" or recorded location of the claim or group of claims. When this was done it usually pre-dates any shaft or other major work on the property so yes it will be "inaccurate" if the shaft is what is important to you.

This brings up a point. If you change the location for a locality, it would be nice to have the ability to have the "Survey Type" to include: GPS, satellite photo (aka Google Maps), air photo, etc., with an annotation field to include what it is based on, i.e. the mine shaft, and possible date of reading, or whatever is deemed pertinent.

Bill

24th Jul 2014 19:25 UTCChester S. Lemanski, Jr.

Bill,

Yes, you are right on. Those sorts of data are valuable.

Chet

15th Aug 2014 03:51 UTCStephen Pegler

Accurately locating a claim in the old days before accurate surveys and modern instruments must have been quite a challenge. But it always amazes me that how accurate the location is of some of the old mines. I assume a lot of old locations are given in Township, Range, Section, etc. and then converted to lat, long, or UTM data. A lot of times the GPS data on mindat gets me close and then I use GoogleEarth to get a more accurate location. That is, as long as there is some surface trace of the old mine or claim. Oh well, field mineral collecting is always an interesting challenge.

Steve

18th Aug 2014 16:11 UTCDave Owen

Stephen hit the nail on the head here. In a past life I did mapping for the oil and gas industry. This was before computers and everything was done by hand. I would use oil and gas plats and old maps from various sources to create my own maps utilizing components from the various sources. The one thing I learned was the data was seldom the same, close maybe but rarely spot on. The same applies to mine locations. Now that the data has been yet again taken on a different format the chances of error has increased yet again. The thing to know is that in most cases expect the data to be close but not totally accurate. Use all your resources to come to the best possible conclusions as to a location and go from there .The tools available now are worlds better than what I used to use but it still takes a little work. Just think of it as an advantage over the competition. If all you had to do is say show me the mine it would greatly decrease the odds of making a good find. Dave

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