The time is 8:50am on a cooling fall day when I decide to explore an old digging in the Santa Rita Mountains. I have seen it from several hundred feet away but there is a steep gradient and I have waited for moderate temperatures.
9:28: Phone calls and other housekeeping done for the day, I pack a lunch and some water. I consult Google Earth and Mindat to finalize plans.
9:47: I have my coordinates and mine name: Silver Leaf Mine, Greaterville Mining District, Pima County, Arizona, USA.
10:34: Out! Loaded trash for a dual-purpose trip out to the landfill and recycling center. Waste not, want not.
11:00: Turn off of Highway 83 and onto Gardner Canyon Road. I set my odometer to zero and drive through Ophir Gulch where gold placers were found, but not by me.
At 0.8 miles I turn right onto Fish Canyon Road. The state-provided marker calls it Route 163.
1.3 miles in, I am rolling along, enjoying the bumpy drive when a deer appears on my left. For a moment I think that it might jump into my fender but I brake hard and the gravel slides under my tires. In a puff of dust, the woodland creature runs away. I think that the tawny deer out here are a near-perfect match to the surrounding dry earth and grasses.
11:21, 5.2 miles in: I pass the parking area for Kentucky Camp. For six years, between 1902 and 1908, this was the headquarters for a hydraulic mining operation, the Santa Rita Water and Mining Company. Later it served as the ranch house for a cattle operation until it was acquired by the US Forest Service. The remains of the ‘camp’ are less than a five-minute walk down a wide dirt road that is also a part of the Arizona Trail.
There are several preserved adobe structures. One serves as a visitor’s center, complete with placards on the camp’s history. Another serves as a ‘Bed, No Breakfast.’ Reservations can be made through the Forest Service to obtain the keys to the building, which has electric power. Potable water and camp-type commodes are also on site. A third outbuilding was the place for processing the gold ore that came into camp.
The raison d’etre for the Santa Rita Water and Mining Company was due to the vision of a California mining engineer, James Stetson. Water is useful for separating gold from sand and gravel. Stetson’s brainchild was to dam up the seasonal rainfall in the mountains and then slowly pipe it into a water cannon that could be used to blast a stream into the walls of a wash. The erosion action of the water would leave the gold on the floor of the wash where it could be scooped up for easy refining back at the camp. The hydraulic mining took place in nearby Boston Gulch.
The company invested between $125,000 and $175,000 and recovered a remarkable $3,000 in gold. Stetson, the chief engineer, died in a tragic fall from the third-floor window of The Santa Rita Hotel in Tucson. Things that make you go hmm.
11:32, 7 miles in: I arrive downhill from the mine site. To get to my objective I will have to gain 260′ of elevation in just 700′ of travel. It is steep.
The digging that I have done on the Silver Leaf Mine has yielded scant information other than that it is a former underground silver, lead, copper, and zinc mine. The mineral list gives 12 validated minerals. The historic record of ownership, years worked and total production is blank.
I grab my backpack with its hammer and water, and my walking stick, and begin the sideways trudge up the hillside.
The first waste rock pile that I encounter has some chrysocolla which is always a blue thrill. A dark black and brown rock, with a quartz vein attracts my attention. It is very dense and heavy when I lift it to examine. Tiny reddish crystals in several vugs on the rock make me think it might contain a vanadate of lead.
The second and third waste piles that I visit have open, horizontal adits that have been bat-barred, so no entry today. Next to one are some laid-up stones, built into the bank, maybe to form a shelter outside of the opening.
On my way back down and out I find a snake skin that has been shed on some rocks under a mesquite tree. How does a snake get out of its skin? Friction, according to one old song.
It is late afternoon. I am in the shadow of the hill that contains the Silver Leaf Mine, about which I still know very little.
Keith Krizan can be contacted at therealkbkkbk@gmail.com