Looking For Rocks In The Desert?

This is part 3 of our trip to Indian Pass, Picacho Peak and the Tumco area.

After the climb, we still had plenty of daylight left, so we decided to check out some more items of interest in the area. As we headed away from Picacho Peak, we stopped to check out some vehicles we had seen from the summit.

Charlene the heavy equipment operator

Not too sure what this was?

While reading old issues of Desert Magazine, Roy found an article about rock hounds looking for a blue rock called dumortierite. I think it's more of a purple color, but to his own... . We stopped at a wide spot on the Indian Pass road and headed over to the closest wash that headed north. If we had been thinking more clearly, we would have combined this part of the trip with our visit to Indian Pass on the first day. The magazine article had mentioned that the source of the rocks were in the mountains to the north and they were washed down the into the washes. Well off we went and walked and walked and found nothing like what we were looking for for the longest time. Then, it occurred to me, the purple rocks that I was seeing every now and then were what we were looking for. After that they were easier to find, never in too much abundance, but enough to keep things interesting.

Charlene searching the wash for dumortietite

At last, we found some pieces

Sunset

After the search for the dumortierite, we set up camp along side the road and had a pleasant evening out under the stars. In the morning we woke, ate breakfast and decided that we would do about a half days worth of exploring before heading home. Our first stop was a small hill, that was a cyanite mine in WWII. The mineral appears to form the entire hill. The most interesting pieces were a light blue to green color.

Remnants of the mining operation

After exploring the mine, we then moved on to the old ghost town of Tumco. It was fairly intact up until the 1950s, at which time vandals systematically burned down all the wooden buildings, including a hospital.

Tumco was a gold mining company town

One of two cemeteries at the old town site

Remnants of a stone structure

One of the things that surprised me was how much broken glass we found

We won't accuse the builders of being master masons

I don't think anyone would call this the most hospitable place to live

Is finding a bullet out here kind of like finding a needle in a haystack?

Charlene standing next to some of the tailings

Hey, it's Vanna!

A chuckwalla among the ruins

I was impressed by the size of these leeching tanks. The gold ore was crushed into a powder and then put in these tanks with cyanide. The cyanide would cause the gold to separate from the rest of the material and then they would extract the gold and dump the rest of the tailings.

One of the tanks

They don't make them like this anymore

Charlene giving scale to the unstable looking tank and supports

With this many tanks there was a tremendous capacity and on some days they crushed up to 167 tons of ore a day, before the mine was exhausted in 1914.

One can't help but wonder how much cyanide is still in the tailings?

After Tumco, we decided to head for home. Along the way I snapped a couple of shots of this building. I've noticed it for some time, it appears to be old and certainly has unusual architecture.