Page 67 - The Geology and Ore Deposits of Sierra County, New Mexico - Bulletin 10

66 GEOLOGY AND ORE DEPOSITS OF SIERRA CO., N. M. Quoting again from "The Ore Deposits of New Mexico" :
According to F. A. Jones, 31 the discovery of silver at Kingston was made in 1880 by a party of prospectors. The two first locations were the Iron King and the Empire. In 1881 the area along the east slope of the mountains from Kingston to Grafton, embracing a belt 50 miles long from north to south and 20 miles wide from east to west, was organized into one mining district called the Black Range district. In this area were a number of mining camps and out of it several districts have been formed.
Named from north to south, the districts into which this old Black Range mining district has been from time to time sub- divided, are: The Black Range mining district, which extends from north of the Sierra County line to Bear Creek near the old abandoned town of Robinson; the Apache mining district extend- ing from Bear Creek south to Monument Creek 5 miles south of the town of Chloride ; the Palomas mining district, embracing all territory south of Monument Creek, including Hermosa, as far as North Percha Creek, 6 miles north of Kingston; the Black Range mining district, the second division in the region to bear this name, including the Kingston area from North Percha Creek to South Percha Creek, 3 miles south of the town. The Tierra Blanca district on the east side of the range, and the Carpenter district on the west slope extend the mining region several miles farther to the south.
Production from the entire region has amounted to about $9,080,000 as shown by the following table.
No estimate was made of the value of the various classes of ore shipped, as much of it was suit by prospectors in lots of a few sacks each from widely scattered workings, and no accurate records of it were available. F. A. Jones 32 has given the figures for production to 1904 for the more important camps in the region, but for the others the writer was dependent upon the estimate of those familiar with the early history of the camps. For the production after 1904, reliance was placed upon the ability of various residents of the district concerned to prorate the value of the county production and the records of shipments made, as listed in the annual Government reports in Mineral Resources of the United States.
31 New Mexico mines and minerals, p. 94, 1904. 32x Op. cit.