Lordsburg AZURITE & MALACHITE

Colorful Minerals at a Former Copper Mine

- STORY & PHOTOS BY ROBERT BEARD

An accessible and easy-to-reach locality with abundant azurite and malachite in veinlets and on the surface of broken basalt is just south of Lordsburg, New Mexico.

The site consists of two large cuts in Cretaceous basalts and is in the northern part of the Virginia subdistrict of the Lordsburg Mining District. It can be reached by a 2WD vehicle and some hiking, but a 4WD vehicle is needed to get close to the collecting sites.

The area surrounding the cuts is flat, and the trenches cannot be seen until you come up close to them.

HISTORY OF LORDSBURG

Before the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1880, the hills south of Lordsburg were prospected for silver, with the first claim made on April 7, 1870. In 1873, the district was visited by G. K. Gilbert, a geologic assistant with the Wheeler Survey mapping the American West through a series of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expeditions.

The survey's findings were published in an eight-volume set and contributed to the creation of the U.S. Geological Survey. It was a major achievement, and though Lordsburg was a small part of the survey, it established Lordsburg as a silver camp before a railroad town.

Gilbert anticipated the railroad would hasten the mine development, but like many mining districts of the time, investors got ahead of themselves. A small smelter was built at what later became the town of Shakespeare. Completed in February 1882, it made four smelting runs until December, when it closed due to a lack of ore.

Despite the presence of copper and lead minerals, there was only interest in silver ores. The district went nearly inactive after the price of silver dropped from above $1 per ounce before 1890 to 78 cents per ounce in 1893 during the Panic of 1893.