New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

The Red Lake prospects are located in the west half of section 29, T178, R28E, about 12 mi east of Artesia, New Mexico. The area has produced some copper and a few ounces of silver and may have produced lead and zinc. E. C. Anderson refers to the area as the Caprock escarpment, and he reported small amounts of lead, zinc, copper, gold, and, silver in New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources Bulletin 39 (p. 44).

Mineralization in the area is restricted to breccias in the Rustler Formation (Permian) and perhaps the Salado Formation (Permian). No primary minerals have been found, and the mineral¬ization observed was formed by oxidation of an unobserved deposit of unknown size and distance from the present deposits. The primary deposit might have been deposited from brines formed in or adjacent to the Permian Basin, probably during Permian time. If this hypothesis is true, the deposits observed represent an oxidized expression of a Mississippi Valley-type deposit.

The area was explored by means of several prospect pits and an open cut measuring approximately 50 ft long, 20 ft wide, and 15 ft deep. The open cut contains copper mineralization consist-ing of chrysocolla in a gangue of quartz and dolomite.
The prospect pits in the area have Pb-Zn mineralization consisting of wulfenite, hemimorphite, anglesite, and descloizite in a gangue of quartz, dolomite, barite, goethite, calcite, and kaolinite. The wulfenite occurs as blades in vugs and frozen in a goethite matrix. The crystals are reddish-orange to yellow and have a maximum length of about 1 cm. The hemimorphite blades are colorless and reach a length of approximately 5 mm.