Silver mining in Arizona
[1] Silver ore was first discovered in west-central Arizona in 1583 by Spanish explorer Antonio de Espejo, but no mining resulted.
[2] Father Eusebio Kino, in charge of the Spanish missions in southern Arizona from 1687 to 1711, noted a number of “minas” in the mountains bordering the Santa Cruz valley (present Santa Cruz County, Arizona), but the Spanish word “mina” can mean either a mine or an unexploited mineral deposit.
Mining was held back because Arizona was the northern fringe of the Spanish frontier, and plagued by guerilla war with the Apaches.
[3] When southern Arizona became a United States possession by virtue of the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, American prospectors and investment started mining silver deposits previously known to the Spanish and Mexicans in present Santa Cruz and Pima counties.
A soldier named Sullivan discovered native silver while building a military road in central Arizona.
Bisbee later produced more silver than any other district in Arizona, 102 million troy ounces, but mostly as a byproduct to copper mining.
[6]: 4 Silver was discovered in the Cochise County mountains as early as 1858, but ongoing conflict with the native Indians prevented development.
[7] In 1858, Frederick Brunckow, a Prussian-born mining engineer, built a cabin near the San Pedro River after finding a small silver deposit nearby.
In September 1860, two of the white men were robbed and murdered at the cabin and Brunckow was found dead in the mine with a rock drill through him.
After briefly serving as a scout for the United States Army during 1877, Ed Schieffelin began prospecting for silver in the hills east of the San Pedro River.
He used Brunckow's San Pedro mine as a base for operations to prospect among the rocky outcroppings northeast of the cabin.
The area was only about 12 miles (19 km) from the hostile Chiricahua Apache Indians led by Cochise, Geronimo and Victorio.
[12] The vein of silver ore was above the San Pedro River Valley, on a waterless plateau called Goose Flats.
[11] With only 30 cents in his pocket, Schieffelin searched for his brother Al, who he had not seen in four years, and finally found him at the McCracken Mine in north-eastern Arizona.
He persuaded Al to show his three remaining ore samples to the recently arrived assayer, Richard Gird, who had a reputation as an expert.
[14]: xiii As the mining industry grew, Tombstone spawned three nearby sister towns that took up the chore of stamping and processing the ore. Charleston, Millville, and Contention were all on the San Pedro River to take advantage of the water needed to run the mills.
The mines operated successfully and in late March 1881 water was found in the Sulphuret shaft at 520 ft below the surface.
Low ore values, lost production and the expense of many millions of dollars to fight the water drove the company into bankruptcy.
[14]: 113–43 During World War I the camp was revived, not as a silver producer but as the nation's foremost supplier of manganese, a strategic metal.
In 1883, writer Patrick Hamilton estimated that during the first four years of activity the mines produced about USD $25,000,000 (approximately $818 million today).
