Carlysle and Summit Gold Mines

Field Collecting:
Southern New Mexico
Eastern Arizona

Carlysle Gold Mine
Summit Gold Mine
STEEPLE ROCK MINING DISTRICT
Grant County, N.M.

NOTE: Please DO NOT ask for directions to the collecting locations below! Most, if not all, of this information can be obtained from the following guide books.

"Rock Collecting near Lordsburg, New Mexico" by Dave Millis
Can be purchased at the Border Rock Shop, 980 East Motel Drive, Lordsburg, NM 88045 (505)542-3724

"Minerals, Fossils, and Fluorescents of Arizona" by Neil Bearce
Can be purchased on Amazon.com

[2004]

View of the Morenci copper mine in the background.

[2004]

Bitter Creek Road

[2004]

Summit Gold Mine

There were thousands of core samples and buckets filled with plastic bags of ore samples inside the mouth of this old gold mine. Most of the core work seemed to be done in the late 1980's. Someone sure spent a lot of money and, evidently, didn't make the BIG strike.

[2004]

Carlysle Gold Mine Produced gold, silver, and lead from about 1880 through 1946. There are many old mines and mine dumps in the 10-mile trend of mineralized quartz filled fissures and faults that comprise the Steeple Rock mining district. Only in a few of these dumps can you find minerals of value to collectors. The Carlysle mine is one of the best in the district. The minerals that you can may find include the following: calcite, barite, fluorite, pale amethyst, argentiferous galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, argentite, tetrahedrite, pyrite, and chloroargyrite.

[2004]

[2004]

One of the several open audits... Notice the large rock on top of the mine entrance, just to the right of the three people working on the left of this picture. The rock was later pushed off and busted up to reveal a wealth of collectible specimens. I was even luck to retrieve a few of them!

[2004]

Sulfide ore... The gold was included in this ore along with lead, zinc, iron, copper, and silver. The secondary carbonates included some malachite and azurite. There also was some small quartz crystal lined vugs of a light amethyst color.

The road down to the old mine shafts.

The parking lot at the mine. . .

Dave Millis busy sitting in a pile of rocks with his favorite crack hammer . . .

Dave and Herold talking ROCKS . . .

chalcanthite [copper flower]

Is a water-soluble sulfate mineral, commonly found in the late-stage oxidation zones of copper deposits.

It would be great if we could collect this mineral specimen but it is so delicate it falls apart to the touch. Also, the water content is so high that when these specimens dry out they will crumble into a white powder. These pictures are really the only way to collect these particular specimens.

chalcanthite
[copper flower]

chalcanthite
[copper flower]

2007
Herold and Jeannette Bushman, Dave Millis, and I were the only ones brave enough to travel to the Carlysle mine on Friday. Everyone else was either washing clothes, traveling to meet friends, or moving down to Deming to get ready for next weeks field trips. There was some question about the condition of the Carlysle mine road outside of Duncan, AZ since the area has had a lot of rain and sleet over the last week. We found the road a little muddy in spots but actually better than I had remembered it. When we arrived at the mine, we all walked down to survey the collecting conditions as there had also been rumors that a large portion of the dumps had been reclaimed. Wrong on all accounts. . . A couple of piles might have been used for road fill but everything else looked the same as it had the last time we were there. Herold and Jeannette decided to try to make it to East Camp mine for the massive amethyst but I decided to stay where I was because the road to East Camp was horrible in dry conditions and I didn't want to find out what it was like after all the bad weather. The Bushmans came back a couple of hours later to report that they never made it all the way to the mine but did O.K. where ever they stopped. Dave and I had a great time collecting pyrite encrusted rocks with vugs containing tiny quartz crystals and some micros. I found a boulder chocked full of large Bornite crystals with some Galena and Pyrite sprays throughout the remainder of the specimen material. We did see a little chrysocolla along with some malachite and azurite in the dumps but with all of the sulfur present, most of these minerals were highly weathered and would fall apart.