Circular 84—County, township, and range locations of New Mexico's mining districts

By L. A. File, W. H. Hays, and S. A Northrop, 1966, reprinted 1980, 66 pp., 2 tables, 2 figs., 1 appendix, 1 index. Companion to Bulletin 1, 1909. Supplement to Circular 77.

Mining districts and subdistricts are listed by county and by township and range within the county. Sources of information are indicated by symbols for each agency: Bureau of Mines Records, State Inspector of Mines Records, and Mining Map of New Mexico put out by the NM Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources. Known locations of mines by section, township, and range were used to determine the township and range descriptions of these districts. Therefore, the section numbers in the descriptions refer to the location of a mine known to be in the district, and within the township and range location. However, it is to be understood the district is not necessarily limited to the description.

Since the first mining claim was filed in NM, on March 26, 1685, by Pedro de Ablos for his mine Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Zaragoza, in the Fra Cristobal Mountains-tens of thousands of names to prospects and mines, and hundreds of names to camps, subdistricts, and districts. Many districts have never been formally organized with specific boundaries. District names have often been applied loosely, and a single district was often subdivided into two or more subdistricts or camps. Prospects have been referred generally to a prospecting district or region.
In addition to various misspellings, some areas were mislocated. Taylor reported that the Moreno mines were "30 mi north of Taos, Moro County." The term "district" was not yet applied. The construction of railroads in the Territory between 1878 and 1882 brought a great wave of prospectors. This is when the term "district" came into use.