Old Mines of Southern California: Desert-Mountain-Coastal Areas Including the Calico-Salton Sea Colorado River Districts and Southern CountiesFairbanks, Harold W. (Harold Wellman)
History
Old Mines of Southern California: Desert-Mountain-Coastal Areas Including the Calico-Salton Sea Colorado River Districts and Southern Counties
Fairbanks, Harold W. (Harold Wellman)
Geology -- California, Southern; Mines and mineral resources -- California, Southern
feet, with bold, almost perpendicular cliffs facing the mountains.
Portions of the sandstone containing the fossils are often very much
hardened.
The first crystalline rocks met are dark and fine grained, with traces
of bowlder-like inclusions, and are evidently eruptive tuffs. Above
these are green, dioritic rocks. These intrusives are followed for
several miles by sandstone and shale, in which the stratification is
often obliterated. In other places thin layers of sandstone and shale
are wonderfully contorted. The dip is at a high angle either east or
west. In the vicinity of the old Silverado Camp there are dikes and
bunches of a green dioritic rock. The mines in the Silverado district
are again being developed to some extent. The mineral belt is about 2
miles wide, and extends nearly north and south. The country is formed to
a great extent of dikes of greenish to blackish rocks, often showing
distinct hornblende crystals. The dip of the metamorphic rocks is east
about 45°. There is one main mineral vein located, beginning about a
mile north of Silverado, and extending in a southerly direction for 7 or
8 miles. The Quincy Mine is one of the most northern ones. The vein has
a width of 2 feet; the ore, silver-bearing galena in a calcite gangue.
It carries but little base metal of any kind. The ore has a peculiar
appearance, the galena being distributed through the gangue in little
leafy crystals or aggregates. The fissure is well defined and regular,
with a pale green syenitic rock on the hanging wall, and a dark diorite
on the foot wall. This hanging wall rock weathers to a light gray color,
producing a rock known as porphyry among the miners. South of this mine
a side vein carries much antimony. The Quincy has been opened along a
length of 500 feet. The ore is quite uniform, producing one eighth in
concentrates. The Quincy camp has an elevation of 2,300 feet. South of
Silverado Cañon, in Silver and Pine Cañons, a great amount of work was
done during the former excitement. The sides of the steep, rocky cañons
are fairly honey-combed with tunnels, which were undertaken without
sufficient prospecting, and, of course, never struck anything. The New
York Mine spent much money, but did not prove a success. West is the
Princess, and farther still, about 1,200 feet above the cañon, is the
Blue Light Mine, on which much work has been done and rich ore taken
out. The mines south of the cañon are in a feldspathic rock, which
weathers white. It is undoubtedly an intrusive porphyry, for traces of
feldspar crystals are to be seen. The mines are characterized by a large
amount of zinc-blende, iron pyrites, and not a large percentage of lead,
making them more difficult to reduce. The porphyry is mineralized in
many places where no traces of the precious metals occur. Litigation and
poor management seem to be the chief factors in stopping work in this
district. Though some of the ore runs into hundreds of dollars to the
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