Albert Lea Mine (Albert Lea property; Lea tunnels; Albert Lea tunnels), Globe, Globe Hills, Globe Hills District, Globe-Miami District, Gila Co., Arizona, USA

A former underground Pb-Zn-Cu-Ag-Au-V-Mo mine located near the south boundary of sec. 22, T1N, R15½E, 1 mile S of Buckeye Mountain, 1½ miles NE of Globe. Developed and worked by Lenor Ceferino Liano, of Globe (1944-1946). Produced 1941-1946. Previous operators include Ortega & Cochran.

Mineralization is a vein deposit with an irregular ore body hosted in the Troy Quartzite.Ccomprised of several small, weakly mineralized fissure veins in qartzite breccia. A prominent fault zone strikes N35W. The mineralization is terminated to the west by a steep NE-striking fault.

The rocks that crop out in the vicinity of the property are the Troy quartzite and narrow dikes and small irregular bodies of diabase and diorite porphyry. The quartzite generally dips about 10S to SW. and is cut by many minor faults; along the faults it is broken to a coarse open breccia. Thin, discontinuous diabase dikes have been intruded along some of the faults. Later displacement occurred along the walls of the dikes, and along small cross faults, some of which offset the dikes a few feet. To the west the mineralized fissures are terminated by a steeply-dipping, northeastward-striking fault, along which the block to the SE has been depressed several hundred feet.

The productive vein strikes about due east; the dip ranges from about 75ºN. on the upper adit level to about 60ºN., 65 feet below the level. At the west end the vein ends against a diabase dike intruded along a fault that strikes north and dips 55ºE.

The ore occurred as small bunches or discontinuous shoots along the vein (fault zone) in quartzite breccia. The bunches of ore apparently showed no definite pattern of arrangement, as discerned by the location of the stopes. Between the stopes, the quartzite breccia is practically barren of the ore minerals.

The vein matter is completely oxidized, except for a few scattered remnants of galena. Lead is present mainly as cerussite, commonly accompanied by a sprinkling of massicot. Hemimorphite and descloizite are the only zinc minerals recognized. Mixtures of brown limonite and manganese oxides, main;ly hard psilomelane-like minerals, are abundant especially along the hanging wall side of the vein fault zone. Drusy quartz occurs throughout the mineralized quartzite breccia. Specularite occurs as veinlets.

Breccia fragments and fractures in the walls of the vein are commonly coated by thin crusts of pale-yellow or orange vanadinite crystals or brown descloizite. Mineralization is associated with a Late Cretaceous-Tertiary intrusive period.

Workings include 2 adits with drifts and crosscuts and a connecting vertical shaft. A winze was sunk to 120 feet below the upper adit level, with 3 sub-level drifts at depths of 38, 65, and 95 feet. Production during the period 1944-1946 was some 1,203 tons of ore yielding 232,248 pounds of Pb and 7,500 ounces Ag, valued in all $10,930 (period values). Ore shipped to the smelter averaged approximately 0.012 oz. Au/T, 6.7 oz. Ag/T, 12% Pb, 4%Zn, and less than 0.1% C. Most of the production was obtained from small stopes between the sublevels and above the drift on the adit level.

References:
Peterson, N.L. (1950) Arizona Bureau of Mines Bull. 156, Geology Series 18: 105.

Wilson, E.D., et al (1950), Arizona zinc and lead deposits, part I, Arizona Bureau of Mines Bull. 156: 105-107.

Peterson, N.P. (1962), Geology and ore deposits of the Globe-Miami district, Arizona, USGS PP 342: 72, 75, 78, 124-126.

Anthony, J.W., et al (1995), Mineralogy of Arizona, 3rd. ed.: 248, 290, 410.

Arizona Department of Mineral Resources Albert Lea file.

Arizona Department of Mineral Resources U file Pb 13.

MRDS database Dep. ID #10027459, MRDS ID #M003136; and Dep. ID #10209465, MAS ID #0040070132.