Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):
35° 24' 4'' North , 114° 10' 58'' West
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):
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Long-form identifier:
mindat:1:2:34356:4
Other/historical names associated with this locality:
Cinco de Mayo Mine; Little Giant Mine; Antietam Mine
A former Cu-Ag-Au-Pb-As-Mo occurrence/mine located in the NE¼NE¼NE¼ sec. 10 & in the NW¼NW¼NW¼ sec. 11, T23N, R18W, G&SRM, 1 mile SE of Chloride, on Bureau of Land Management administered and/or private land. Owned by J. Lowitz, New York (1957). Operated 1901-1948. The USGS MRDS database stated accuracy for this locality is 500 meters.
The Altata mine, one of the principal copper mines and one of the first mines worked in the district, is situated at the base of the mountains about 2 miles southeast of Chloride and about 100 feet above it and is easy of access. It is owned by the Altata Mining Company, of Chicago, and is steadily producing at a moderate rate.
The mine is developed principally by a main shaft and drifts to the depth of 180 feet. A large dump shows that considerable work has been done. The production is reported to have been about $200,000. The country rock is pre-Cambrian schist, striking N. 23° E. with vertical dip. The vein strikes- N. 40° W. and dips about 75° NE. Surface exposures indicate that it is not more than 2 or 3 feet thick, but it is reported to widen downward and to have contained a large body of good-grade ore near the surface, and also a similar one extending from the 130-foot level to a point below the 160-foot level.
The ore contains copper and silver in a quartz gangue, the copper occurring chiefly as bornite and being locally enriched by secondary chalcocite. Smelter returns show 32 carloads of the ore shipped some years ago to have averaged about $100 a ton, of which 20 per cent was copper and the rest silver. In the crosscut in the bottom of the mine a new vein, 20 feet thick, has recently been encountered with an 18-inch ore shoot on the hanging wall and a 24-inch shoot on the foot wall. The assay value of the ore varies from $12 to $15 a ton in gold, silver, and copper, and some similar ore is scattered across the intervening width of the vein
Mineralization is a vein deposit hosted in schist. The ore body strikes N40W, and dips 75NE at 0.91 meter wide. Mineralization is associated with a Lower Cretaceous porphyry intrusion. Precambrian schistosity strikes N30ºE. Veins, fissures and dikes strike NW to NNW regionally. Associated rocks include Late Cretaceous-Neoproterozoic granite. Local rocks include Early Proterozoic granitic rocks and/or Quaternary surficial deposits, undivided.
Workings include underground openings with an overall depth of 54.86 meters.
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8 valid minerals.
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References
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To cite: Ralph, J., Von Bargen, D., Martynov, P., Zhang, J., Que, X., Prabhu, A., Morrison, S. M., Li, W., Chen, W., & Ma, X. (2025). Mindat.org: The open access mineralogy database to accelerate data-intensive geoscience research. American Mineralogist, 110(6), 833–844.
doi:10.2138/am-2024-9486.
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