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
Some of the hornblende is
altered to chlorite. Borders of iron ore, probably magnetite, are
common, frequently preserving the original outline where the hornblende
has suffered great decomposition.
Dark-green basic dikes, which seem to be greatly altered diabase, occur
in the district, but have no connection with any of the ore deposits as
far as observed.
Numerous dikes, large and small, of a red felsitic rock, occur
throughout the district, and seem to bear an important relation to some
of the ore deposits. All of the rock is much decomposed, and its
identification is not an easy matter. It appears under the microscope to
be a finely porphyritic rock, having a somewhat fluidal structure, as
shown in the arrangement of the numerous small, lath-like crystals of
feldspar. Small blebs of quartz occur quite abundantly. In a general way
the rock resembles some rhyolites.
On the northern flank of the range immense masses of red and brown tufa
occur, besides great flows of black basaltic lava. These rocks form a
terrace-like ridge that extends for several miles along the base of the
mountains. Two large cinder cones, one on the northeast end of the
range, the other about 4 miles distant in the desert valley to the
northward, form prominent landmarks.
The basalt is coarse to fine grained, usually black or dark gray, and is
often scoriaceous. It contains plagioclase, augite, and olivine, and
abundant magnetite in a micro-crystalline or granular base. Near the
foot of the range the basalt has overflowed the beds of tufa, which
latter, it is said, contains from a trace to as high as four ounces of
silver per ton. As far as I have any knowledge of it, no prospecting has
been done in these tufa beds, but the fact that silver exists there at
all would lead one to believe that under proper conditions ore bodies of
great value may occur.
At the base of the mountains, at an altitude of 1,800 feet, is a dry
lake, which drains a large area of country. In this basin water has been
obtained by sinking a well 80 feet in depth. Though the well is located
near the edge of the basin, there is little doubt that sufficient water
can be obtained in this basin for milling purposes.
The principal vein in the district lies along the north side of the main
range, and is known as
THE IMPERIAL LODE.
This great vein, the outcrop of which may be seen for 20 miles, is a
“fissure” in every sense of the word, though not a simple one, for it
has numerous divergent branches of considerable size. The main fissure,
however, is strong and constant, and outcrops boldly for nearly 8,000
feet. It varies in width from 4 to 18 feet. It is everywhere well
defined and often shows a banded structure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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