The Carmelita Mines were named after Carmelita Campbell, who was formerly married to a politician by the name of John C Campbell. Due to his affair with another woman, Carmelita sued him for their house as part of her Alimony. She then went on to prospect for mines, where she found this claim in 1879. She worked her mines with much determination. During a flood in 1895, the waters rushed through the property, washing away equipment and leaving workers to climb up trees for survival. After the waters subsided she said, "I am not discouraged, as the mines are looking well..." She worked the mines until the end, when she was forced off her claim, while trying to put her in a Pheonix insane asylum. She fought it, but they still ended up taking her to Los Angeles where she spent her final days.[1]
From a 1940 report,
This is the famous Carmelita, Gold Mine, located about 75 years ago, owned or controlled by Carmelita Campbell, A Chilian woman who married John Campbell the first Congressman from Arizona, and who held the controlling interest until 1917, at which the present owners acquired control of the property. Valve of ore shipped no obtainable.[2]
Granite and porphyry contacts. The granite of the gneiss or decomposed granite - quartz veins, carrying good values in gold and silver. Both oxides and sulphides. We have a ledge of cherry white quartz located for 7500 feet - this is crossed by many other veins with a Main Vein of prominent out-cropping. The Main Vein is a true fissure vein.[2]
One Engineer of wide experience made the statement to me "that there was ore enough in sight to run a 25 ton mill for 10 years more", and this he stated was a conservative estimate. Approximately 75 tons on dump - no tailings.[2]
A double compartment shaft - down 250 feet - bad timbers below 100 foot level and water. 68 foot shaft at cavin - in ore - with approximately 9 feet of water. Main Vein is opened up by cuts and shallow shafts - 20 to 30 feet deep.[2]
First the property is exceedingly valuable, and second it is owned by trustworthy and reliable people, and with 44 years experience in mining, milling and examining property, I can truthfull say this is one of the very best properties, it has been my pleasure to examine.[2]
A 1939 assay indicated 1.98 oz. per ton of gold with a then value of $69.30 and 4 oz per ton of silver with a then value of $2.80.[2]
From a 1967 report,
The Alaskan mine, was an original part of the Carmelita Mines. Found on the plain south of Harquahala Mountain, in northeastern Yuma County, is accessible by 8 miles of a road that branches eastward from the Salome-Hassayampa road at a point 13 miles from Salome and continues to Aguila.
This deposit was discovered in 1920 by A. Johnson, the present owner, and has been worked intermittently by several different concerns. The total production of the mine amounts to approximately 1,200 tons of ore which contained from $6 to $16 worth of gold per ton. From January, 1925, to May, 1933, the mine produced 722 tons of ore that averaged 1.69 per cent of copper, 0.503 ounces of gold, and 0.37 ounces of silver. per ton. The Alaskan Mines, Inc., treated approximately 800194 tons in a small flotation plant, but the results were unsatisfactory. Water for all operations was hauled from distant places.
Here, a gravel-mantled pediment is trenched by arroyos which, in a few places, expose steeply dipping metamorphosed, impure shales of probable Mesozoic age, intruded by dikes of altered, basic porphyry.
When visited in February, 1934, workings on the Alaskan property included a 187-foot inclined shaft that connects on the west with a few hundred feet of shallow openings. The shaft inclines about 25° southward and passes beneath the ore deposit, which occurs within a gently southward-dipping brecciated zone that, due to flattening southward from the collar of the shaft, is only a few feet below the surface. In places, the hanging wall has been eroded away, and the breccia covered by surface gravels. The ore consists of brecciated, silicified shale with small fragments of coarsely crystalline, shiny gray quartz, cemented with limonite, chrysocolla, calcite, and minor amounts of fluorite. Yellow lead oxide stain is sparingly present, and a little manganese dioxide occurs in places. According to Mr. Johnson, the gold, which is rather finely divided, occurs mainly where the chrysocolla and reddish limonite are relatively abundant.
The breccia appears to represent a thrust fault zone into which the ore-bearing solutions entered from below along transverse fractures. On the south, the ore body is cut off by a steeply northward-dipping fault, but the structural conditions that might determine possible continuation of the ore westward have not been determined.[3]
