Harshaw Mining District

Hars= haw Min= ing District

Driving south from Patagonia along Harshaw Road, FR 58, you will see spreading, gnarled sycamore trees scattered among the old oak trees and the rock outcroppings. Curve to the right 6.1 miles down the road onto FR 49, a= nd 2 miles down the road you will come to the Harshaw cemetery. Park under the spreading sycamore tree and view the many manicured graves on the hillside. Several of the graves have well preserved accounts of the history of the persons buried there.

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Continue 1.2 miles to Flux Canyon R= oad, FR 812. Hiking down the road, you will pass through the reclaimed Trench Ca= mp mine site and at FR4685, cross the creek and walk up 4685 to the end of Humboldt Canyon. You will pass many mine si= tes and walk below spectacular walls of rock. The bedrock of this district incl= udes formations of Paleozoic limestone, quartz diorite, granite porphyry, rhyoli= te, and adesite, as well as purple altered adesite volcanic rock. The oxidation= of the iron content of the minerals in the rocks provides brilliant color.

In the rock wall, .6 mile= s up the canyon, a cave opening houses a grotto, which has been gilded with gold pai= nt and contains candles and statues. To the left on the cliff is embedded a ti= le of the Virgin Mary.

Upon leaving Flux Canyon Road, note the remains of an adobe buil= ding to the south. This was the Harshaw/Trench Camp Church.

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Mining was born in the Hars= haw area when silver was discovered in the Patagonia Mountains. Indians = and Mexicans discovered “light blue oxidized silver rocks” in the Trench Mines before 1850. It was after the Civil War that American prospect= ors began searching the area. In 1877 a large vein of silver was discovered by = an ex-soldier, David Tecumseh Harshaw who was grazing cattle on his land. Hars= haw named the lode of free-milling chloride and horn silver ore Hermosa. He nam= ed the boomtown Harshaw, which by 1880 included a 20-stamp mill, a mile-long m= ain street and 2,000 residents.

The Harshaw Mining District encompasses an area 5 miles wide from Sonoita Creek Patagonia 9 miles southeastward to a point 3 miles beyond Harshaw, with the main ridge of the= Patagonia Mountains to the west of Alum and = Flux Gulches separating it from the Patagonia District. Most of the mining activ= ity was from 1880 to 1903, but the mines were productive from the mid 1850̵= 7;s to the middle 1960’s. Total production was 1,300,000 tons of ore containing about 86,000 tons of zinc, 72,000 tons of lead, 9,200,000 ozs. <= span class=3DGramE>of silver, 3,100 tons of copper, and 4,300 oz of gold. (Source: www.mindat.org).

&nbs= p; The Trench Camp group of claims had 57 mine opens, mostly shafts and step out prospects. The total of all shaft mines was about 16,600 feet of underground workings (Source: HAMF). The World’s Fair Mine, .5 miles south of Humboldt Canyon on FR49 had 7 mines and an elaborate array of building and shafts on site, = with extensive tunnel and shaft operations. The World’s Fair Mine “contained about 15,000 feet of drifts, tunnels stopes, shafts, and w= inzes. The main entrance is a crosscut tunnel at an elevation of 4, 680 feet A 10-stamp mill was erected on the property, worked from the early 1880’s to 1954 and produced some 13,0= 00 tons of ore” (mindat.org )

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The remains of the 10-stamp mill at World’s Fair= Mine in Flux <= st1:PlaceType w:st=3D"on">Canyon

All of the Harshaw mines = were operated sporadically in the early 1900s. Arizona Smelting and Refining Com= pany (ASARCO) worked the mines from 1937 to 1956 and is the current owner of mos= t of the mines. In 2003 the Environmental Protection Agency ordered Asarco to ap= ply for discharge permits for the Trench Camp Mine, which was discharging acid = mine drainage containing zinc, copper and cadmium above water quality standards into Alum Gulch, which drains into Patagonia Lake. The reclamation of the land can be= seen in the Trench Camp area along Humboldt Canyon and is monit= ored quarterly by Asarco for discharges.

John and Bette Bosma, 04/2006.

Sources: The Resources of Arizona: A Manual of Reliable Informat= ion Concerning the Territory. Jero= me, Arizona. 1881.

Hazardous Abandoned Mine Finders.<= /span>

Web Sites: www.mind= at.org; www.fs.fed.us/r2/coronado/forest/recreation

&nbs= p; http://southwest.library.ari= zona.edu

&nbs= p; http://yosemite.epa.gov

Photographs: Jan Sink, Green Valley.