Latitude: 31°22'N
Longitude: 110°42'W
A former underground Cu-Ag-Zn-Pb-Au mine located in the SE ¼ sec. 34, T23S, R16E and the center N½N½ sec. 3, T24S, R16E (protracted), 1/3 mile SW of Washington Camp, at an elevation of about 5,700 feet, in the lower east slope of a lobelike ridge descending from the crest of the range. Patented (private) land ? - see group file description). Located about 1880 by a party of prospectors. Leased to Mr. Salisbury in the very early 1880's. Later W.A. Clark took a bond on the mine. In 1898 N.H. Chapin leased his partners' interests in the mine. Beginning in April, 1899, C.R. Wilfley took out an option on a half interest in the mine and purchased the other half. The mill was later enlarged and about this time Wilfley and the Corey brothers organized as the Pride of the West Co., with headquarters at Denver, CO. About 1906 the property was acquired by the Duquesne Mining & Reduction Co. Also owned at times, or in part, by the Humphrey Mining Co.; Byrd; Radon Mining Co.; and Nash Mines.
Bill Panczner - 2003 advised that this mine has an accompanying mill which was the location where C.R. Wilfley developed his still used "Wilfley Table" for the separation of ore. The mine is now filled in and the shaft collar is marked by a simple fence with four posts.
Mineralization is massive, banded and bedded, partly drusy, replacement bodies of irregularly mixed quartz, calcite, garnet, sulfides and magnetite in crystalline and pyrometamorphosed Permian Naco Group limestone along a contact with intrusive Laramide granodiorite. Shallow oxidation and some supergene enrichment.
The contact-metamorphic deposit lies in the crystalline limestone along the footwall side of a dike of the quartz monzonite. The dike strikes N.17W. and dips about 50ºW., but the dip flattens in the lower part of the mine. At the mine the dike is apparently conformable with the limestone and is about 60 feet wide, but it widens southward to 250 feet at the Giroux shaft. At a point 500 feet south of the shaft it incloses a horse of crystalline limestone 100 feet long and 20 feet wide, whence it extends southward into the main are of the quartz monzonite.
At the mine the dike is composed of a peculiar siliceous facies of the rock, which is fine-grained and resembles aplite. The dike separates a body of coarsely crystalline, apparently very pure limestone 200 feet wide, from a considerable mass of siliceous, banded limestone on the west side. So far as can be observed, all the rock adjoining the east side of the dike consists of this coarse limestone. Close to the dike and north of the tunnel the limestone is extraordinarily coarse.
At a point 100 feet NW of the mine tunnel and 6 feet east of the dike the limestone is composed of coarsely crystalline white calcite and is very pure, but at the mouth of the tunnel it is silicified or completely changed to diopside. In the vicinity of the mine garnet appears along the footwall side of the dike and the ore deposit forms a zone 30 feet wide, consisting mainly of irregularly mixed coarse calcite, garnet, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, pyrrhotite, and a little magnetite. Locally it is vertically banded or bedded.
Workings featuring the Giroux shaft, at 400 feet deep, plus a tunnel at 700 feet long, driven S.7ºW., and a 400 foot deep winze, and a 50 foot inclined shaft containing 3 levels with drifts and stopes. There is also a large surface cut 32 feet wide and 250 feet long. Worked from the early 1880's and sporadically through 1955. Produced some 103,000 tons of ore averaging about 4.5% Cu, 4 oz. Ag/T, 1.4% Zn and minor Pb and Au.
References
Crosby, W.O. (1906) The limestone-granite contact deposits of Washington Camp, Arizona: American Institute of Mining Engineers, Transactions: 36: 626-646.
Schrader, F.C. & J.M. Hill (1915), Mineral deposits of the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains, Arizona, USGS Bull. 582: 323-325, 332-335.
Baker, R.C., 1961, The geology and ore deposits of the southeast portion of the Patagonia Mountains, Santa Cruz County, Arizona: Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, Ph.D. dissertation.
Keith, Stanton B. (1975), Arizona Bureau of Mines Bull. 191, Index of Mining Properties in Santa Cruz County Arizona: 81 (Table 4).
Arizona Bureau of Mines card file Santa Cruz County.
U.S. Bureau of Mines field notes, PB1 (p61 ?).
Arizona Department of Mineral Resources Pride of the West Mine file.
MRDS database Dep. ID file #10210816, MAS ID #0040230323.
Mineral List
14 entries listed. 13 valid minerals.
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