New Cornelia mine

Last updated
New Cornelia mine and the town of Ajo, Arizona. Photo: NASA NewCorneliaMine.jpg
New Cornelia mine and the town of Ajo, Arizona. Photo: NASA
Native copper specimen from the New Cornelia mine. Size 6.4 x 4.7 x 4.6 cm. Copper-74902.jpg
Native copper specimen from the New Cornelia mine. Size 6.4 x 4.7 x 4.6 cm.
Shattuckite with malachite, polished specimen, New Cornelia mine. Size 5.3 x 5.1 x 5.0 cm. Shattuckite-47277.jpg
Shattuckite with malachite, polished specimen, New Cornelia mine. Size 5.3 x 5.1 x 5.0 cm.

The New Cornelia mine is a currently inactive open-pit copper mine in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It was the only productive mine in the Ajo mining district, and is located just outside the town of Ajo, which was built as a company town to serve the New Cornelia mines. The roughly circular pit is one and a half miles across at its widest point, and 1,100 feet deep at the center. Although not generally regarded as a 'dam', the New Cornelia Mine Tailings is often cited as the largest dam structure in the United States with a volume of 7.4 billion cubic feet. [1]

Contents

History, archaeological mining history

Native Americans had long mined surface exposures of copper veins near the New Cornelia for pigments: red copper oxide and green copper carbonate. Spanish miners are known to have excavated test shafts in the area by 1750, but the amount of copper produced is not known. Americans claimed the location in 1854 and shipped a few loads of selected ore to Swansea, Wales, but high transportation charges left little or no profit, and the mine was abandoned. [2]

Development of the property was delayed because of its remote location in the Sonoran Desert. The low-grade copper ore could not be economically shipped to a smelter, and had to be concentrated at the site. The Cornelia Copper Company was organized by businessmen from St. Louis in 1900 to develop the property. However, early owners fumbled in their search for a suitable treatment process, and fell victim to "process men". In 1906 the owners contracted with Fred McGahan to build his unique "vacuum smelter" to treat the ore. The following year the company had McGahan indicted for obtaining money under false pretenses. It then arranged with another inventor to build facilities to treat the ore by the unproven "Anderson Process", which proved just as useless as McGahan’s process. A United States Geological Survey author later described these processes as "... among the most bizarre ever to have been floated in American mining." [3] Mining commentator Horace Stevens wrote:

"The officers of the Cornelia are residents of St. Louis and vicinity, of excellent local standing, and perfectly sincere in their operations, but are totally lacking in practical knowledge of the copper business, and prone to overmuch experimentation with new processes." [4]

The company reorganized as the New Cornelia Mining Company. In 1911, the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company, which already had a major operation in Bisbee, took an option to buy 70 percent of New Cornelia stock. Calumet and Arizona confirmed the existence of a large copper carbonate orebody, and exercised the option. It then found a practical way to treat the ore, and located a sufficient source of water several miles north. A pilot plant began operation in 1915, and the Tucson, Cornelia and Gila Bend Railroad to Gila Bend was completed in 1916. [5]

Full-scale mining using steam shovels was started in 1917, making the New Cornelia the first large open pit mine in Arizona. [6] Mining and treatment of the underlying but lower-grade copper sulfide orebody began in 1924.

New Cornelia came under the ownership of Phelps Dodge in 1931 when Calumet and Arizona merged with Phelps Dodge.

New Cornelia Mine came under the ownership of Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Corporation, when it acquired Phelps Dodge, to become the largest publicly traded copper producer in the world in 2007.

The mine was shut down in 1983 due to low copper prices, and a worker dispute with the local union. Some of the minerals, that were byproducts of the mining / refining process, are currently being removed and sold for alternative uses by the Minerals Research and Recovery corporation under contract with Freeport McMoRan, (2012), which purchased the New Cornelia Mine in their 2007 acquisition of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Copper production from the mine totaled 6.304 billion pounds of copper, [7] worth about US$20.8 billion at the 2010 copper price of $3.30/pound.

Geography

The mine is at 32°21′20″N112°51′57″W / 32.35556°N 112.86583°W / 32.35556; -112.86583 Coordinates: 32°21′20″N112°51′57″W / 32.35556°N 112.86583°W / 32.35556; -112.86583 , at an altitude of 899 feet (274 m) above mean sea level.

See also

Related Research Articles

Morenci, Arizona CDP in Greenlee County Arizona

Morenci is a census-designated place (CDP) and company town in Greenlee County, Arizona, United States, and was founded by the Detroit Copper Mining Company of Arizona. The population was 2000 at the 2000 census and 1,489 at the 2010 census. The biggest employer in Morenci and the owner of the town is Freeport-McMoRan, the owner of the Morenci Mine, the largest copper mining operation in North America, and one of the largest copper mines in the world. The town was a site of the Arizona Copper Mine Strike of 1983. The large open-pit mine is north of the town.

Ajo, Arizona Community in Pima County, Arizona

Ajo is an unincorporated community in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It is the closest community to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The population was 3,304 at the 2010 census. Ajo is located on State Route 85 just 43 miles (69 km) from the Mexican border.

Phelps Dodge Company

Phelps Dodge Corporation was an American mining company founded in 1834 as an import-export firm by Anson Greene Phelps and his two sons-in-law William Earle Dodge, Sr. and Daniel James. The latter two ran Phelps, James & Co., the part of the organization based in Liverpool, England. The import-export firm at first exported United States cotton from the Deep South to England, and imported various metals to the US needed for industrialization. With the expansion of the western frontier in North America, the corporation acquired mines and mining companies, including the Copper Queen Mine in Arizona and the Dawson, New Mexico coal mines. It operated its own mines and acquired railroads to carry its products. By the late 19th century, it was known as a mining company.

James Douglas (businessman) Mining engineer and businessman (1837–1918)

James Walter Douglas was a Canadian born mining engineer and businessman who introduced a number of metallurgical innovations in copper mining and amassed a fortune through the copper mining industry of Arizona and Sonora.

Louis S. Cates was an American mining engineer and businessman. He was president of Phelps Dodge from 1930 to 1947.

L. D. Ricketts

Louis Davidson Ricketts was an American economic geologist, metallurgist, mining engineer and banker who pioneered development of copper mines in the U.S. state of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora.

Copper mining in the United States Review of the topic

Copper mining in the United States has been a major industry since the rise of the northern Michigan copper district in the 1840s. In 2017 the United States produced 1.27 million metric tonnes of copper, worth $8 billion, making it the world's fourth largest copper producer, after Chile, China, and Peru. Copper was produced from 23 mines in the US. Top copper producing states in 2014 were Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana. Minor production also came from Idaho, and Missouri. As of 2014, the US had 45 million tonnes of known remaining reserves of copper, the fifth largest known copper reserves in the world, after Chile, Australia, Peru, and Mexico.

Tom Childs, Jr. was an Arizona miner and rancher.

Calumet and Hecla Mining Company

The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company was a major copper-mining company based within Michigan's Copper Country. In the 19th century, the company paid out more than $72 million in shareholder dividends, more than any other mining company in the United States during that period.

Copper mining in Arizona Review of the topic

Copper mining in Arizona, a state of the United States, has been a major industry since the 19th century. In 2007 Arizona was the leading copper-producing state in the US, producing 750 thousand metric tons of copper, valued at $5.54 billion. Arizona's copper production was 60% of the total for the United States. Copper mining also produces gold and silver as byproducts. Byproduct molybdenum from copper mining makes Arizona the nation's second-largest producer of that metal. Although copper mineralization was found by the earliest Spanish explorers of Arizona, the territory was remote, and copper could seldom be profitably mined and shipped. Early Spanish, Mexican, and American prospectors searched for gold and silver, and ignored copper. It was not until the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876 that copper became broadly economic to mine and ship to market.

Copper Queen Mine Copper mine in Cochise County, Arizona, US

The Copper Queen Mine was a copper mine in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. Its development led to the growth of the surrounding town of Bisbee in the 1880s. Its orebody ran 23% copper, an extraordinarily high grade. It was acquired by Phelps Dodge in 1885.

Washington Michael Jacobs was born in Balford, South Carolina to Ann Baldwin Jacobs and Cornelius Jacobs in the United States of America. Both of his parents were natives of South Carolina and his mother was a native of Charleston.

The Safford Mine is an open-pit copper mine located in Graham County, Arizona, eight miles (13 km) north of the city of Safford. The mine is owned and operated by Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold.

The Detroit Copper Mining Company was an American copper mining and smelting operation based in Morenci, Arizona. Incorporated in July 1872, it existed as an independent company until 1897, when a controlling interest in the company was purchased by the predecessor of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. It continued to exist as a subsidiary of Phelps Dodge & Co until 1917, when all Phelps Dodge operations in the area were consolidated into the new Phelps Dodge Corporation, Morenci Branch.

Christmas is an uninhabited mining community in Gila County, Arizona, United States. The mine which led to creation of the town was staked on Christmas Day 1902, prompting the name. During the three decades in which the town's post office operated it was a popular destination for holiday mail seeking a "Christmas" postmark. The mine is also the location where the minerals apachite, junitoite, and ruizite were first discovered.

Sierrita mine Copper mine in Pima County, Arizonaa

The Sierrita Mine is a large copper mine located in the Sierrita Mountains of Arizona, in the southwestern part of the United States. The mine is located in southern Pima County, southwest of Tucson and west of Green Valley-Sahuarita.

Ira Joralemon

Ira Beaman Joralemon was an American mining engineer, economic geologist, and mining company executive, who specialized in exploration and mining of copper ore deposits. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Joralemon was involved in the discovery and development of numerous major copper and gold deposits, many of which went on to become operational mines. In addition to his professional career within the minerals industry, he was also a popular science author and historian of the mining industry.

Molybdenum mining in the United States

Molybdenum mining in the United States produced 65,500 metric tons of molybdenum in 2014, worth US$1.8 billion. The US was the world's second-largest molybdenum producer, after China, and provided 25% of the world's supply of molybdenum.

Cyprus Amax Minerals

Cyprus Amax Minerals was a major US-based mining company formed in 1993 through the merger of AMAX with the Cyprus Minerals Company. It was one of the world's largest producers of Molybdenum and Lithium and was a leading producer of copper and coal. It also produced iron ore and gold. It was acquired by the Phelps Dodge Corporation in 1999.

Tucson, Cornelia and Gila Bend Railroad Shortline railroad in Tucson, Arizona

The Tucson, Cornelia and Gila Bend Railroad went from Gila Bend, Arizona to Ajo, Arizona.

References

  1. ↑ "new cornelia mine Archives". Tata & Howard. Retrieved 2021-01-06.
  2. ↑ James Gilluly (1946) The Ajo mining district, Arizona, US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 209, p.98
  3. ↑ James Gilluly (1946) The Ajo mining district, Arizona, US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 209, p.99
  4. ↑ Horace J. Stevens, The Copper Handbook, v.8 (Houghton, Mich.: Horace Stevens, 1908) 600-601.
  5. ↑ "Old Building Gets New Lease on Life as Visitors Center, Chamber Office". Arizona Daily Star. Tucson, Arizona. July 10, 2013. p. A2. Retrieved September 21, 2021.
  6. ↑ C. A. Anderson, (1969) Copper, in Mineral and Water Resources of Arizona, Arizona Bureau of Mines, Bulletin 180, p.128.
  7. ↑ Arizona Dept. of Mines and Mineral Resources, 2008, Arizona's Metallic Resources Trends and Opportunities - 2008 PDF file, retrieved 9 January 2009.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.