Ellsworth District – La Paz County, Arizona
You will need rope work to access the mines.
Easy high clearance 4WD road.
Contact us for exact coordinates

The Mineral Hill is a large, and important mining claim in the Ellsworth District in La Paz County, Arizona. The mine has been examined, explored and sampled over the course of the last 100 years. It has had a full mill and processing plant built on site. It appears to have been worked for gold, with no reported production as it was still illegal to hold gold in any quantity until 1973. The mine site is a series of adits, shafts and drifts spread along the Northwest Granite Wash Mountains. The tunnels are cut into hard rock and appear competent and stable. Air in the workings was good and steady at 20.8% with no other level variances. The mine has been called the Mineral hill historically. It has also been known as the Oro Fino and Dona Kay. There is substantial copper visible in veins and wide bodies in the mines. There was some native gold and pyrites found in the quartz gangue inside the workings. According to historic docs, the claim has been mined for gold, copper and silver. The gold was being milled right on site and remains of the old mill are still seen. There are multiple open adits and shafts on the property. It appears by the lowest shaft in the flats there were some miners quarters. On the claim there was 1 collared incline shaft that surveyors could see at least 100 feet of ladders at. However about 20 feet down the ladders are not connected to anything.

The geology of the southwestern part of the Harquahala Mountains and much of the Ellsworth district is similar to that in the study area, but the rocks are more extensively fractured and altered than in the study area. Also, the largest mines in the district, the Bonanza and Socorro, are localized along relatively flat structures, not the commonly noted northwest-trending, high-angle dikes and veins of the study area.[1]

This portion of the range consists of small, sharply eroded mountains flanked by desert plains. Bancroft states that the following succession of rocks is present: Coarse-grained basal granite, exposed north of the Golden Eagle mine; quartzitic grits; limestone and shale; thin conglomerate; and shale and limestone with some dolomite and conglomerate. These rocks are more or less metamorphosed and complexly faulted. Darton has shown that the limestones, in part at least, are of Carboniferous age.[2]

Gold prospects in the Granite Wash Mountains were first discovered in the 1860's but there was little active mining until after completion of the railroad in the early 1900's. Other periods of activity included the 1930's, 1940's and the 1950's when there was active exploration for the production of tungsten. the largest mine in the area is the Yuma Mine with recorded production of 8,600 tons @ 2.3~ Cu, 0.3 oz Ag, and .03 oz Au/T. Recorded metal production from the entire Granite Wash Mountains includes several thousand units of tungsten and several hundred to one thousand tons of ore each from the Glory Hole, Dandy, Desert Queen and True Blue Mines, averaging .40 to .60 oz Au/T. During the copper boom of the 1960's and 1970's both Bear Creek and Tenneco reportedly examined the Yuma Copper Mine and may have drilled a hole or two in its vicinity. Oliver Kilroy has held a major land position in the area for almost 20 years, has carried out extensive geophysical surveys, and has drilled fifteen holes for copper
mineralization with negative results. Exploration activity that presumably was directed toward gold mineralization during the 1980's has included dozing and
trenching by Bill Baker at the True Blue Mine, and by Charles Willmore at the Pandora's Box and Dandy prospects in Secs 6 and 7, T5N, RI4W. The Dona Kay prospect
in Secs 12 and 13, T5N, RI5W was drilled by Baroque Resources and Weaco in 1985 and five or six rotary holes were drilled on the major low-angle fault and
associated veins at the Three Musketeers tungsten property in SW% of Sec 24, T7N, RI5W. Most of the land in the area is Federal, administered by the ~ and old
claim posts run rampant through the mountains and over the adjacent alluvial covered pediment. The only active mine in the District is the Yuma Mine where
Donald Nelson is mining gem quality azurite and malachite.

1. Dona Kay/OroFino/Mineral Hill Mine
- Cu, Ag, Au
-Copper, silver, and Au mineralization, with quartz gangue in an irregular deposit in a fissure zone in a thin sequence of lithic sandstone member of the
McCoy Mountains Formation and in large, overlying and underlying diorite-andesite bodies. -Keith (1978, p. 148), geologic update by this study

Access to the Mine: You will need rope work to access the mines.
Tailings Present: 10,000-49,999 tons, Moslty waste rock. The number 1 commodity seen in the tailings was copper.
Entrance: Solid Rock
Mine Cut: Shafts, adits and prospects.
Depth / Length: Over 10,000' of underground and exposed workings.
Minerals in the Mine :Gold, Silver, Copper
Foot Traffic in the Mine: None
Last Worked: 1985

Federally Registered Mining Claim ID: AMC443329