Mine Canyon in the Whetstone Mountains

Today's hike was more of a short foothills ramble. We managed three, perhaps four miles in the heat of the day. Temperatures were in the mid 70s but it felt hotter than that; perhaps because of reflected heat off the sand and boulders.

By noon I needed a break from the computer screen and my Spanish and took all three dogs on a drive to the dry Whetstone mountains 20 miles north of us. This is a notorious dry range of scrub brush mountains and cattle and plenty of abandoned, open mines. I hadn't been here in five years.

I drove toward Huachuca City, turned west on Highway 82 and then took the Sands Ranch Road north of this town. It's a paved road for only a short distance. This road straddles the foothills, small sun-burned homes and a few isolated nicer homes and enters the appropriately-named Mine Canyon from the southsoutheast. Horses, ATVers, targetshooters and hunters come to this range. A broken FS sign welcomes visitors to "Canyon" with the remaining sign mysteriously absent. Not much is written about this small SkyIsland range, perhaps because few official trails exist and the mountains are reserved for mining claims and other resources.

Eight miles from my highway turn-off I parked off the road and continued my walk, opting to go an hour out and back. We didn't quite go that far as the dogs quickly got hot and tired and drank more water than what I had rationed with. After the first water break 25 miunutes into the uphill hike, the dogs had drank one-third of the gallon water. Another twenty minutes later it was another one-third gone. Sara's tongue looked dark red and she panted heavily, and Sammy didn't look too much better. Their frequent stops under the scarce mesquite and oak trees was another warning that they weren't feeling too good.

One thing that stood out today though: there was no illegal trash anywhere. I spotted a few brass ammunition shells and isolated plastic bottles, but nothing like in years past where entire families would abandon backpacks under dry mesquite trees.

This is pretty country but when it's dry this place quickly turns deadly. The oak trees are looking sick from the lack of water, and they suffered additional damage from the early February deep freeze. Lots of brown leaves on the oaks around here, that only translates into fire kindling. The grasses are all dead. The mesquites aren't in bloom yet. If this drought continues this is going to be one dangerous fire season. There was very little green besides creosote.

I wandered up the main mine road that soon lost itself on a high ridge. I had been here before with Kevin, back in early 2005, and haven't been back. I remember this to be steep, dry, spotted with abandoned mines and mining claims, and isolated. Erosion from past monsoons have wiped out parts of the side trails and let other paths overgrow. This is an area better explored in the colder months. I went down two shorter trails which both ended in dead ends. The white sedan that had fallen into the steep ravine was not visible this time. Is it even there? The story of how that car got where it landed has got to be a horror story.

The Forest Service installed a new gate at its land boundary and only one stray calf was spotted off the road. Two ATVers came up the road as I left the national forest at 3pm. They were the only other sign of human life.

I need to come back to this region when there is more water around, on a colder day earlier in the morning. I chose the heat of the day to come out here and it was surely not enjoyable to the two older dogs. I waited so long to get going because of garden work in the backyard.

There are many unexplored, faint trails in these mountains, and legend has it there is still gold in them thar hills. This is also one of the few places where casual hikers have found meteoritic rock samples and fossils, fossils that once were both marine and land animals. Fault lines also are evident here, even to a casual looker like myself, and using Google Earth one can see where several ancient lakes once were.

Perhaps the hidden treasures underneath the rock are meant to remain secret? At any rate, this is a pleasant area for a foothills hike with a group, as many of these trails meander and form loops. I'll leave any mysteries I have about this place for another time to be solved.

According to a 1982 report conducted by the Bureau of Mines, Department of the Interior that I found online, mining in Mine Canyon began in the 1870s with small ores of copper, silver and gold extracted in what is now the "Whetstone Roadless area." The Nevada-Mascot and Two Peaks mines were in this region. Where those the two abandoned mines I found? The typed report further claims that

"Copper, gold, and silver are found disseminated in the quartz veins and
shear zones, as disseminations along seams and fractures in Laramlde porphyry dikes, and as pyrometasomatlc lenses near contacts with limestones of the Cretaceous Bisbee(?) Formation (Creasey, 1967) and the Pennsylvanlan-Permlan Naco Group (Keith, 1973, p. 91). Adits, shafts, open cuts, and shallow pits explore shear zones and quartz veins in a Laramide age granodiorite stock (Creasey, 1967).

Total production for individual properties is not known, but 36,048
Ibs of copper, 8 oz of gold, and 611 oz of silver were produced between 1955 and 1961 from the Neyada-Mascot, Two Peaks, and other small mines in the Mine Canyon area (U.S. Bureau of Mines, Mineral Information Locator System, (MILS), 1955-1961 data files, Intermountain Field Operations Center, Denver Federal Center, Denver, CO 80225)."
www.admmr.state.az.us/DigitalLibrary/USBM.../USBM_MLA_129-82.pdf