The Mountain City District, Elko County
The Mountain City District, Elko County
The
Mountain City Districts covers a number of subdistricts in north
central Elko county, including the Cope, Murray, Fairweather,
Sooner, Marseilles, and Van Duzer Districts. It is north of the
Independence Range where great gold deposits are being mined
today.
The Mountain City District, like Battle Mountain, was a silver district at first. Between its discovery in 1869 and 1881, it produced $1,000,000 in silver. Gold was mined as well, mainly nuggets of gold in stream beds, called placer gold. Copper was not mined until over 60 years later, when S. F. Hunt, a prospector and geologist, discovered the very rich copper ore body. Like the great Spanish copper deposit, it was named Rio Tinto.
Like Rio Tinto in Spain, the copper orebody of Rio Tinto in Elko County is overlain by a thick gossan. The word "gossan" comes from a word meaning "iron hat." It consists of a rusty colored deposit of iron minerals. Often, it is a clue to the presence of an ore deposit below it.
S. F. Hunt saw the gossan at Mountain City. Hunt
used the technique of drilling to look beneath the gossan. A
long, narrow hole is dug into the Earth. Material in the hole is
pulled out to be examined. At a depth of 240 feet beneath the
surface, Hunt found the copper deposit.
The mine was operated by a subsidiary of Anaconda Mining Company. By the time the miners had mined all the ore in 1947, 94,900 tons of copper had been produced. For much of the life of the mine, it was the highest grade copper mine in the country; that is, it had the greatest amount of copper per amount of mined ore rock. During the early days of mining Rio Tinto, the ore contained 37% copper. The average grade for the life of the mine was 9.7%.
Over 25% of the ore was shipped directly to a
smelter in Utah. The rest was turned into copper concentrate at
the mine. Like the great Spanish Rio Tinto deposits, the mines of
Mountain City produced gold and silver as well as copper.
Today, little remains of Mountain City's mining days. Not really a ghost town, new residents with newer interests live there. The mines are closed. But not far away to the south, in the Independence Range, Nevada's world-class gold rush is roaring on.
Geology
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