New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

The San Pedro mine, near the town of Golden, New Mexico, is located in one of the oldest placer gold fields in North America. Along with its 200-250 yrs of existence are tales and stories that rival the best of treasures of gold/wealth as well as boom/bust. As with most such locations, facts, dates, and names tend to get lost or obscured with the passing of time. One of the main objectives of current work is to uncover, sort, and as accurately as possible assemble the details of ownership of the San Pedro mine. Subsequent goals are to gain a better understanding of the bigger picture as it relates to the individuals who controlled the mine as well as continue the search and reporting of new minerals and/or confirm reports of some specimens at the location.

The "modus operandi" for this whole project, now in its seventh year, is the publishing of a book and other documents (including a CD) that will give a reasonably accurate picture of the mine's owners, tales and stories of discovery, chronology of events, geology, and mineralogy. Plans are to also include color pictures of all the minerals found on site. Involved in this ambitious project have been many hours of walking both above and underground, photographing, collecting and cataloging, analysis of specimens, talking to key individuals, searching the literature for information, leading tours, presenting, and writing.

This past year's work has resulted in some significant information and discoveries that add further to the lore of the San Pedro mine. Most significantly has been the connection of the San Pedro to copper mines in Butte, Montana; Copper Basin in Tennessee; and the Globe mines in Arizona via its ownership. Mineralogically the discovery of smoky and amethyst quartz scepters, ankerite, anatase, brookite, brochantite, common opal, scheelite, and powellite (a molybdenum bearing variety of scheelite) have either expanded and/or confirmed reported minerals found at the location.

In summary, recent work has shown that connections to other big name copper mining locations is a very important component in the history of the San Pedro mine, and there are still minerals species, new to the location, to be found in this contact metamorphic, metasomatic setting.
 

References:

1. Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, 2003, research work on Lewisohn brothers in Butte, Montana. Glasscock, C. B., 1935, The war of the copper kings; builders of Butte and wolves of Wall Street: Grosset and Dunlap, New York, 314 pp.
2. Engineering and Mining Journal, 1891, Prominent men in the mining industry.
3. Gobla, M., 2004, pers. comm., the Butte, Montana, mines.
4. Lee, C. G., and Atkinson, W. W., Jr., 1985, Geochemistry of zoned garnets from the San Pedro mine, Santa Fe County, New Mexico: New Mexico Geology, v. 7, no. 4, pp. 69-74.
5. Williams, C., in progress, The San Pedro mine: Sacramento, California.