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| (Fig. 01) |
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| (Fig. 02) |
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Mine Description: The Whale Mine is a group of seven claims. Zinc was the primary ore mined here. The Whale claim was first located in 1904 by Jesse Jones, who sold it to Addison Bybee for $227. It was relocated by Frank Tursick and Frank Miller in 1909, but for several years only assessment work was done. In 1915-1916 two cars of zinc ore were mined and shipped from a 75-foot shaft in the gulch 750 feet from the main tunnel. The upper shaft is 75 feet deep with drifts at the bottom. In an area 400 by 600 feet around the Whale main tunnel there are at least 12 short tunnels and shafts - with one shaft being 60 feet deep. These tunnels explore sporadically distributed small veins. In the early 1900s Zinc brought about $45/ton, but from what little I have been able to gather, because the ore here was not very pure and that they only ended up finding small veins, the mine never appeared to return much of a profit.
Mineralogy Info: The ore deposits for this area fall into two classifications, gold-copper and lead-zinc. The gold-copper ore is associated with malachite, azurite, chrysocolla, cinnabar, pyrite, limonite and native Gold, which is sometimes visible as wire Gold. The lead-zinc ore is associated with, calamine, smithsonite, cerrusite, anglesite, galena and hydrozincite. The area's unique mineralogy is due to deep surface oxidation that extends down to 600 feet in areas. The sulfide minerals, pyrite, chalcopyrite and sphaletite, in this region have altered to carbonates and sulfates. The lead sulfide galena resisted surface oxidation. |
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11/08/2012 Trip Notes: Leaving Route 161, Sandy Valley Rd heads west, following along an area that is known as the Columbia Pass, between the southern end of the Spring Mountain range and the Table Mountain range on its way towards the town of Sandy Valley. There are literally dozens of old mines scattered throughout the mountains in this area, many visible from the road, others buried deep with the ranges. In addition to some regular stops along this road, we always try to seek out at least one new mine to explore that we haven’t hiked to in the past. On today’s trip we hiked to the Whale Mine, located on the north side of the road (Fig. 02) about 6 miles west of Goodsprings, about half a mile north of Sandy Valley, in Clark County. (Fig. 01) was taken about 3/4 of the way up the old mining road that ran along the south side of the wash at the base of the deep gulch that led to the top of the range. The only two visible structures left today (Fig. 03) appear to be the remains of a cableway that carried the ore down to the bottom platform that had two chutes that dumped it into wagons for transport to the bottom of the mountain. Located above the tailings pile and these two decaying structures is the main tunnel audit which has been sealed for safety purposes. Unfortunately, a review of the surrounding area didn’t provide any rocks or specimen's worth keeping. The view in (Fig. 05) is looking southwest, back down the road that we climbed up.
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| (Fig. 03) |
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| (Fig. 04) |
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| (Fig. 05) |
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