Flux Mine (Goshen Mine), Flux Gulch, Alum Gulch, Harshaw District, Patagonia Mts, Santa Cruz Co., Arizona, USA

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U.S. Bureau of Mines - Arizona Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology file data.

U.S. Bureau of Mines Coronado National Forest Study Report.

Arizona Bureau of Mines file data.

MRDS database Dep. ID file #10048344, MRDS ID #M899931; and, Dep. ID #10234314, MAS ID #0040230054.

A former medium-sized surface and underground Zn-Pb-Cu-Ag-Au-Mn mine located on 11 claims in the SE¼SW¼ sec. 30, T.22S., R.16E., 4 miles south of Patagonia, about 1 mile within the mountains from their north edge, in the head of Flux Gulch, a parallel southwestern tributary of Alum Gulch, about ½ mile SW of the Blue Eagle Mine, at an elevation of about 4,800 feet, on National Forest land. Reportedly discovered in the early 1850's by Mexicans. It was relocated in 1878. Produced 1884-1963. Owned at times, or in part, by R.R. Richardson & partners, of Patagonia (January, 1897- ); Mr. R.R. Richardson ( -circa 1915); the Arizona Gold & Copper Co. (1896- ); Patagonia Mining Co.; Sterling Development Co.; Flux Mining Co.; Benjamin Heney (1905-circa 1909); Allen & Kolberg; Mr. Angel Alverez; Hugo Miller & Associates; Mr. Manuel Encinas; Mining & Commercial Corp.; American Smelting & Refining Co. (ASARCO); A.R. Byrd; E.F. Bolinger; Mr. Juan Jimenez; and, Nash & McFarland.

Mineralization is intersecting quartz-lode veins containing irregular ore shoots of rich argentiferous cerussite with minor copper oxides and silicates in the upper oxidized zone and sulfides in depth. Surface oxidation exists to depths of 250 feet. Veins are along a complex fault zone involving blocks of Jurassic-Triassic volcanics, Paleozoic limestone, and Cretaceous shale. Strong brecciation and silicic, kaolinite-montmorillonite, chloritic, and propylitic wall rock alteration. Pyrite gossan at surface.

Several veins or ledges seem to center at the mine, particularly from easterly directions, the deposits occur principally in or associated with a main north-south shear zone or lode, the Flux lode, which approximately coincides with the axis of the ridge. The lode is reported to have a known linear extent of 1½ miles (2,413.9 meters). The portion of the lode south of the mine is said to be associated with limestone which accompanies it in the form of a reef, but to the north it lies mainly in rhyolite. At the Flux Mine, the lode dips 45ºW. and ranges from 30 or more feet wide at the surface to about 8 feet in the bottom of the mine.

The ore, especially the oxidized ore, is stained reddish-brown and yellowish by hematite and limonite and some lead carbonate. It is mostly siliceous, rough, porous, or cellular and honeycombed, the feldspar having been dissolved out of the replaced rhyolite which forms the gangue. Some of it is chiefly a friable mass of crystalline gray and whitish cerussite or other lead carbonates and iron, with a very little quartz, which is mostly pyramidal, as shown in the north tunnel, and with it are associated the secondary silver minerals, mainly acanthite.

A body of sulphide ore was opened on the 260 level. Here the vein narrows to 8 foot wide, maximum.

The oldest rock formation at the mine is a small area or nucleus of principally Paleozoic limestone with some associated conglomerate and shale. These sedimentary rocks are intruded by quartz monzonite (?) and granitic aplite and together with them are surrounded, overlain, and intruded by the Tertiary rhyolite or so-called porphyry. A few hundred yards (meters) distant, in or near the deep gulch on the west, occurs a great fault contact between the rhyolite of the Flux Mine and the granite porphyry of Three R Mountain, which probably also intrudes the Paleozoic beds in the vicinity of the mine. The course of this fault, which is about N.30ºW., is approximately followed by the 2½ mile canyon nearby on the west and is marked by a boldly cropping silicified reef extending for several miles across the country from a point about ¾ mile SW of the World's Fair Mine to the north base of the mountains.

The general structure common to the formations of the region is a sheeting which dips 40º NNW. and is well exposed in the north end of Flux Ridge where the road ascends the hill. Prior to the advent of the sheeting; however, the older rocks were variously disturbed, as is shown by their variation in character and attitude.

The limestone is exposed mainly on the SE slope of the hill at the mine, seemingly dipping off southeastward into the gulch, and it is present on all levels in the mine, being especially prominent in the lower levels. In places it is highly crystalline, crushed, brecciated, and altered.

The quartz monzonite occurs at the portal and in the forepart of the west tunnel. It is a dark altered, highly sericitized and crushed granitoid rock. It is medium-grained and is composed mainly of quartz and orthoclase, including some microcline, with hornblende and a little acidic plagioclase. It is inferred that it is intrusive into the sedimentary rocks based on its contact with the crystalline limestone in the lower tunnel.

Later the rock mass at the mine was seemingly intruded transversely by an east-west dike of aplite locally called quartzite and greatly resembling that rock. The aplite occurs in the large open cut on the west, where the ore deposits lie in association with it, as does also much milky-white quartz. Itis purple or reddish-gray, fine- to medium-grained, with chiefly greasy-lustered quartz, and is more or less silicified.

The rhyolite is considerably brecciated and somewhat tuffaceous, and by replacement, seems to form the main repository for the ore.

Tectonic elements include the Alum Gulch Fault Block and complex fault systems associated with the Harshaw Creek Fault.

Workings include more than 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) of work including an open cut, tunnels, drifts, shafts, crosscuts, and stopes on 4 levels (70, 100, 125, and 260), to a depth of 131.06 meters. All levels are entered by adit tunnels. The main shaft is 260 feet deep. An 800 foot west tunnel, and 200 feet of crosscuts on the second and fourth levels. Work commenced as early as the 1850's by Mexicans, and mining continued until 1963. Mining efforts concentrated on a large deposit in the south shoulder of Flux Ridge where several veins or lodes intersect. Ore is porous and honeycombed. Total estimated and recorded production would be some 850,000 tons of ore averaging about 8% Zn, 5% Pb, 2.5% Cu, 5 oz. Ag/T and minor gold, and 2.5% Mn.