Succor Gulch (Sucker Gulch), Empire Ranch area, Greaterville placer deposits, Greaterville, Greaterville District, Santa Rita Mts, Pima Co., Arizona, USA

‡Ref.: Hill, J.M. (1910), Notes on the placer deposits of Greaterville, Arizona, USGS Bull. 430: 11-22.

Schrader, F.C. & J.M. Hill (1915), Mineral deposits of the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains, Arizona, USGS Bull. 582: 163.

Keith, Stanton B. (1974), Arizona Bureau of Geology & Mineral Technology, Geological Survey Branch Bull. 189, Index of Mining Properties in Pima County, Arizona: 121 (Table 4).

Arizona Bureau of Mines File Data.

A Au-Ag placer deposit area in Sucker Gulch, which has three small heads SE of Granite Mountain. Owned at times, or in part, or in places by the Stetson Co.; the El Oro Mining Co.; and the Greaterville Dredge Gold Mining Co.

Mineralization is mostly coarse flake and nugget gold with minor combined silver and some attached galena in medium-sized gravel along recent and older buried channels and terraces close to the mountain front. The gravels were productive to a point a little below its junction with Ophir Gulch. From its head to the moiuth of Graham Gulch the pay channel was 6 to 9 feet wide and 3 to 12 feet below the surface. Between Graham and Louisiana Gulches the pay channel averaged from 20 to 50 feet in width and the depth was from 12 feet at the former to 25 feet at the latter gulch. Below the mouth of Louisiana Gulch the gold was found distributed through the gravels on bedrock for a breadth of 100 feet.

Major operations were undertaken from 1875 to the early 1900's and small and sporadic since then. Estimated production for the entire area is some 30,000 oz. of gold, or more, with about 6,000 oz. of silver.