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Mines are being reopened as gold fever sweeps state
Max Jarman
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 22, 2008 12:00 AM
Gold fever is sweeping Arizona.
Mining companies are scouring the earth, looking for new deposits and working to reopen venerable mines, some with histories that date to territorial days.
With the yellow metal selling for just under $900 per once, more weekend gold diggers are heading for the hills with pans, picks and metal detectors.
Prospecting outfitter Promack Treasure Hunting in Apache Junction has seen its business triple in the past year, and membership in the Superstition Mountain Treasure Hunters gold-panning club has grown to 400 from 70 in the same period.
Club leaders say members can return from a weekend of prospecting with $1,000 or more in gold.
"I wouldn't recommend quitting your day job, but you can make some real money out there," "Minnesota" Ray Ose said.
Ose said he has been prospecting in Arizona since 1948, when he and his father came out from Minnesota to search for the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains.
Investors increasingly have looked to gold as a haven because of falling stock prices and the real-estate slump.
Demand has pushed up the price of gold as much as 45 percent in the past 12 months and brought a dozen or so mainly Canadian mining companies into the state.
While the state is known as one of the world's top copper-producing regions, it also has a gold-mining legacy.
Gold has been found at thousands of locations around the state, with the largest concentration of claims and mines in Yavapai, La Paz, Mohave and Pima counties. Since 1860, Arizona has produced more than 16 million ounces of gold, valued at today's prices at about $15 billion. It also is home to one of the world's best-known "lost" mines: the enigmatic Lost Dutchman.
All of Arizona's gold mines eventually closed as ore bodies played out or price declines made them unprofitable. The last, the Gold Road near Oatman, closed in 1998.
But interest is surging again, and a lot of the activity is focused in La Paz and Mohave counties in western Arizona.
There, American Bonanza Gold Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, is working to reopen the old Copperstone Mine, 10 miles north of Quartzite. Bonanza President and Chief Executive Brian Kirwin said the group has identified a high-grade gold deposit of about 400,000 ounces and has made new discoveries nearby that are being evaluated.
Bonanza is converting the original open-pit mine, which produced 500,000 ounces of gold before closing in 1993, into an underground operation.
The company hopes to have the Copperstone back in production by 2010, with a full-time crew of about 100 miners.
Kirwin said the company also is exploring other promising sites along "Walker Lane," a narrow gold-bearing strip that runs through Arizona, California and Nevada.
"There are a lot of potential gold mines in western Arizona that have been overlooked for a long time," he said.
Other companies prospecting for gold or looking to reopen old mines include:
• Columbus Gold, exploring four projects in western Arizona.
• Patriot Gold, drilling at the Moss Mine near Oatman.
• Tonogold Resources, which optioned the Deeman mine property and is exploring the site west of Kingman.
• Sage Gold, which optioned the Gold Hill property and is exploring the site in Maricopa County north of Phoenix.
See link for the entire article.
http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0122biz-gold0122.html
kenb
Max Jarman
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 22, 2008 12:00 AM
Gold fever is sweeping Arizona.
Mining companies are scouring the earth, looking for new deposits and working to reopen venerable mines, some with histories that date to territorial days.
With the yellow metal selling for just under $900 per once, more weekend gold diggers are heading for the hills with pans, picks and metal detectors.
Prospecting outfitter Promack Treasure Hunting in Apache Junction has seen its business triple in the past year, and membership in the Superstition Mountain Treasure Hunters gold-panning club has grown to 400 from 70 in the same period.
Club leaders say members can return from a weekend of prospecting with $1,000 or more in gold.
"I wouldn't recommend quitting your day job, but you can make some real money out there," "Minnesota" Ray Ose said.
Ose said he has been prospecting in Arizona since 1948, when he and his father came out from Minnesota to search for the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains.
Investors increasingly have looked to gold as a haven because of falling stock prices and the real-estate slump.
Demand has pushed up the price of gold as much as 45 percent in the past 12 months and brought a dozen or so mainly Canadian mining companies into the state.
While the state is known as one of the world's top copper-producing regions, it also has a gold-mining legacy.
Gold has been found at thousands of locations around the state, with the largest concentration of claims and mines in Yavapai, La Paz, Mohave and Pima counties. Since 1860, Arizona has produced more than 16 million ounces of gold, valued at today's prices at about $15 billion. It also is home to one of the world's best-known "lost" mines: the enigmatic Lost Dutchman.
All of Arizona's gold mines eventually closed as ore bodies played out or price declines made them unprofitable. The last, the Gold Road near Oatman, closed in 1998.
But interest is surging again, and a lot of the activity is focused in La Paz and Mohave counties in western Arizona.
There, American Bonanza Gold Corp. of Vancouver, British Columbia, is working to reopen the old Copperstone Mine, 10 miles north of Quartzite. Bonanza President and Chief Executive Brian Kirwin said the group has identified a high-grade gold deposit of about 400,000 ounces and has made new discoveries nearby that are being evaluated.
Bonanza is converting the original open-pit mine, which produced 500,000 ounces of gold before closing in 1993, into an underground operation.
The company hopes to have the Copperstone back in production by 2010, with a full-time crew of about 100 miners.
Kirwin said the company also is exploring other promising sites along "Walker Lane," a narrow gold-bearing strip that runs through Arizona, California and Nevada.
"There are a lot of potential gold mines in western Arizona that have been overlooked for a long time," he said.
Other companies prospecting for gold or looking to reopen old mines include:
• Columbus Gold, exploring four projects in western Arizona.
• Patriot Gold, drilling at the Moss Mine near Oatman.
• Tonogold Resources, which optioned the Deeman mine property and is exploring the site west of Kingman.
• Sage Gold, which optioned the Gold Hill property and is exploring the site in Maricopa County north of Phoenix.
See link for the entire article.
http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0122biz-gold0122.html
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