Tutsagubet Mining District, Beaver Dam Mountains, Washington County, Utah, USAi

Regional Level Types
Tutsagubet Mining District	Mining District
Beaver Dam Mountains	Mountain Range
Washington County	County
Utah	State
USA	Country

The Tutsagubet mining district lies in the central part of the Beaver Dam Mountains in southwestern Washington County. Prospects were initially located in the area in the 1870s, but the district was not organized until 1883. Early hand-sorted ore shipments from the Apex mine to the rail head at distant Milford for transport to Swansea, Wales, ran 54.2% Cu and 140 ppm Ag. The district was worked intermittently from 1884 to 1962. The presence of Ga-Ge was initially detected at the Apex mine in 1958 by Gaylon Hansen, and the mine produced minor Cu-Ga-Ge intermittently from the 1980s to very early 1990s. Total district metal production at modern metal prices is estimated at $45 million. The district is a significant producer and the Apex underground mine is the only important ore deposit.
The Apex mine exploited a Cu-Ga-Ge deposit in a steeply plunging, solution collapse breccia pipe, hosted in the Pennsylvanian Callville Limestone and overlying Permian Pakoon Dolomite. The Apex mine was developed to a depth of approximately 1400 ft where the ore was still thoroughly oxidized, but the breccia pipe probably bottoms in the heavily karstic Mississippian Redwall Limestone hundreds of feet below the deepest workings (Wenrich and Verbeek, 2014). Gallium and Ge are contained in goethite, jarosite, and hematite minerals in gossans that also contain oxidized Cu minerals. A cluster of smaller, but similar occurrences lie in an area of slightly more than 1 sq mi near the Apex mine, but strong Ga-Ge geochemical anomalies are reported along a north-northwesterly trend up to 7 mi to the north-northwest. The Apex deposit’s geochemical signature is Ga- Ge-Cu-Ag-As-In-Re-Sb. The Apex mine is a Kipushi Cu-Pb-Zn type deposit (USGS Model 32c). Worldwide, other Kipushi- type deposits include the Kipushi Cu-Zn ±Ga ±Ge deposit, Zaire; Tsumeb Cu-Pb-Zn ±Ga ±Ge deposit, Namibia; and the Ruby Creek and Kennicott Cu-Ag deposits in Alaska. These other deposits are all large, significant, high-grade deposits (Peterson and others, 1988; Wenrich and Verbeek, 2014).
Nearly all of the Apex’s early Cu-rich ore production was mined from the upper levels, leaving behind the Fe-rich minerals that contain the majority of the Ga-Ge. Production details are sketchy from the Apex mine but are very crudely estimated at about 30,000 tons prior to 1963. Musto produced another 10,270 tons from the Apex mine in 1986 yielding 1645 pounds of Ga, 5634 pounds of Ge, and 224,800 pounds of Cu. The remaining subeconomic inferred resource at the Apex mine is roughly one million tons averaging 0.033% Ga, 0.087% Ge, 1.8% Cu, and 41 ppm Ag, with about two-thirds of the value in Ge.