New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Many well known mines and mineral localities are in the general region of the Black Range west of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and the nearby bedrock areas. The best known locality is Iron Mountain on the west side of the Black Range where Richard Jahns has reported nearly 200 minerals including helvite, danalite, fluorescent fluorite, hypogene willemite, and molybdenian scheelite. About 20 miles to the northwest on top of the range is Nugget Gulch, one of the best localities for 0.5 cm to 5 cm in diameter, banded brown nuggets of cassiterite , in the form of red, yellow, and brown wood tin. Some make beautiful gems when tumbled and polished. North of New Mexico route 52, 1 mile into the Black Range, a-wood gathering road leads northeast into Sheep Canyon where a large wall-forming gold-quartz vein contains some beautiful coarse amethyst suitable for slabbing. Up Turkey Creek and then left up Buster Creek a jeep road leads to the Black Range front. The south fork at the front if followed one-fourth mile will lead to an area along the creek in andesite with many amygdaloidal vugs as much as 5 cm across which contain stilbite and heulandite crystals, some very beautiful.

West of Chloride up Chloride Creek about 2 miles a well maintained cliff road rises to the south. Over the crest the dumps of the U.S. Treasury mine can be seen and driven to with a four-wheel-drive vehicle. At the northwest end of the dump -. across from the old powder house, small flecks of gold can be collected in dark bands of copper and silver minerals in quartz. Twelve miles to the west up Cloride Creek near its source, is the Silver Monument mine, where the dumps contain beautiful massive bornite, freibergite, and (under the microscope) native silver.

South of the highway to Hillsboro and 2.5 miles east of the town is a passable road down Ready Pay Gulch to the east end of the Percha Creek Box. Here old vanadium mines have good yellow buff crystals of type-locality endlichite, orange vanadinite, wulfenite and descloizite. The Macho district, lies 8 miles southwest of Lake Valley, 13 miles northwest of Nutt and about one-half mile west of the Wallace ranch on the north side of Macho Creek. The main dumps have silver-lead sulfides and sphalerite, but the older dumps across the draw to the northeast have good small crystal crusts of endlichite, vanadinite, wulfenite, descloizite, smithsonite, anglesite, hemimorphite, supergene willemite, and possibly coronadite.