Page 104 - The Geology and Ore Deposits of Sierra County, New Mexico - Bulletin 10

MINING DISTRICTS 103
been shipped from the district in small lots, to which may be at- tached a value of about $25 per ton, giving a total production during this later period up to January, 1930, of between $90,000 and $100,000, or a total to that date of $6,350,000. The produc- tion since 1910 may be divided into lead-copper-silver ores, 590 tons ; lead-zinc ores, 60 tons ; silver and silver-gold ores, 2,025 tons ; and low-grade manganiferous silver ores, 1,000 tons.
MINE DESCRIPTIONS
The workings of the Kingston district are largely caved and could not be entered. The ore deposits are not uniformly distrib- uted throughout the district but are in groups, separated by ground that is barren or only sparsely mineralized. One group of these deposits occurs just west of the monzonite stock and on the north side of Middle Percha Creek, about half a mile above the town. Among these nay be mentioned the Blackeyed Susan, Andy Johnson, Brush Heap, Calamity Jane, Illinois and United States deposits. Nearly a mile north of this group is another in which there are several important ore bodies, such as the Com- stock, Black Colt, Kangaroo, Caledonia, Lady Franklin, Superior and Bullion. A little to the west of this latter group are the Iron King, General Jackson, Matchless and Climax properties, while to the north are two groups of claims, active in the early history of the camp, known respectively as the North Percha Camp and as the Mineral Creek Camp. (See Plate V.) South of Kingston in South Percha Creek is the Gray Eagle mine, containing ore of a different period of mineralization. Here the ore is associated with dikes of rhyolite that traverse the limestone, and along which fissure-filling and replacement deposits of silver-gold-cop- per minerals have formed. This ore has averaged several hun- dred ounces of silver to the ton in past shipments. It is said that the Gray Eagle has ore blocked out in moderate amount that will assay 15 per cent lead, 11 per cent copper, 18 per cent zinc, and 14 ounces of silver a ton.
In a very general way, the various groups of deposits con- tain characteristic assemblages of minerals, which may be the result of a zoning of the deposits, dependent upon temperature and pressure conditions at the time of their deposition, which in turn were dependent upon the distance from the source of supply of the mineralizing solutions, or upon the depth below the surface at the time of their formation. In the zone bordering closely on the west side of the monzonite outcrop, the mines named above from the Blackeyed Susan to the Bullion were essentially of the high-grade silver-lead-copper type, with rhodochrosite a prom- inent gangue mineral in the blanket deposits. Here oxidation had produced large amounts of native silver in ores ranging up• to 250 ounces to the ton in silver, with some ore assaying as high as 1,000 ounces silver to the ton. Gold in the ore ranged in value from 50c to $1.20 per ton. Low-grade ore left in the mines,