The Tough Nut Mine is a silver mine established just prior to and just outside Tombstone in Cochise County, Arizona. After an early period of operation that began in the late 19th century, the mine was closed and then reopened in the 1970s.
The mine came to be one of two big strikes by the Tombstone Gold and Silver Mining Company. On March 5, 1879, U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor Solon M. Allis finished laying out a new town site on a mesa named Goose Flats at 4,539 feet (1,383 m), just above the Tough Nut mine. The area was large enough to hold a growing town [1] and was named "Tombstone" after Ed Schieffelin's initial mining claim. The shelters at Watervale were relocated to the new town site and a scattering of cabins and tents were quickly built for about 100 residents.In 1880, Al and Ed Schieffelin sold their two-thirds interest in the Tough Nut for $1 million (~$24.6 million in 2021) each to capitalists from Philadelphia, and sometime later Gird sold his one-third interest for the same amount. [2] Al Schieffelin used a portion of his wealth to build Schieffelin Hall. [3]
It was rich in silver and lead. Secondary commodities were copper, gold, and zinc. Small amounts of cadmium were also produced. [4]
Operations resumed in the 1970s, but from a different entrance. Modern production is primarily silver, copper, lead, and zinc, with smaller amounts of gold and vanadium. The minerals are found in limestone and diorite dating from the late cretaceous period. [5]
Tombstone is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States, founded in 1879 by prospector Ed Schieffelin in what was then Pima County, Arizona Territory. It became one of the last boomtowns in the American frontier. The town grew significantly into the mid-1880s as the local mines produced $40 to $85 million in silver bullion, the largest productive silver district in Arizona. Its population grew from 100 to around 14,000 in less than seven years. It is best known as the site of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and presently draws most of its revenue from tourism.
Edward Lawrence Schieffelin (1847–1897) was an Indian scout and prospector who discovered silver in the Arizona Territory, which led to the founding of Tombstone, Arizona. He entered into a partnership with his brother Al and mining engineer Richard Gird in a handshake deal that produced millions of dollars in wealth for all three men. During the course of Tombstone's mining history, about US $85,000,000 in silver was produced from its mines.
Boliden AB is a Swedish multinational metals, mining, and smelting company headquartered in Stockholm. The company produces zinc, copper, lead, nickel, silver, and gold, with operations in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Ireland.
Hudbay Minerals Inc. is a diversified Canadian mining company primarily producing copper concentrate and zinc metal. Much of its history has centered on Flin Flon, Manitoba, where it has mined for over 90 years. Hudbay currently has operations in Manitoba and Peru, and is working towards building a copper mine in southern Arizona. The company also has exploration properties in Canada, Peru, Chile and the United States.
Contention City or Contention is a ghost mining town in Cochise County in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Arizona. It was occupied from the early-1880s through the late-1880s in what was then known as the Arizona Territory. Only a few foundations now remain of this boomtown which was settled and abandoned with the rise and fall of silver mining in and around the area of Tombstone.
In the United States, copper mining has been a major industry since the rise of the northern Michigan copper district in the 1840s. In 2017, the US 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.
Silver mining in the United States began on a major scale with the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1858. The industry suffered greatly from the demonetization of silver in 1873 by the Coinage Act of 1873, known pejoratively as the "Crime of 73", but silver mining continues today.
Uranium mining in Colorado, United States, goes back to 1872, when pitchblende ore was taken from gold mines near Central City, Colorado. The Colorado uranium industry has seen booms and busts, but continues to this day. Not counting byproduct uranium from phosphate, Colorado is considered to have the third largest uranium reserves of any US state, behind Wyoming and New Mexico.
Silver mining in Colorado has taken place since the 1860s. In the past, Colorado called itself the Silver State.
Silver mining in Arizona was a powerful stimulus for exploration and prospecting in early Arizona. Cumulative silver production through 1981 totaled 490 million troy ounces. However, only about 10% of Arizona's silver production came from silver mining. More than 80% of the state's silver was a byproduct of copper mining; other silver came as a byproduct of lead, zinc, and gold mining.
Lundin Mining Corporation is a Canadian company that owns and operates mines in Sweden, United States, Chile, Portugal and Brazil that produce base metals such as copper, zinc, and nickel. Headquartered in Toronto, the company was founded by Adolf Lundin and operated by Lukas Lundin. While it was incorporated to pursue an interest in a diamond mine in Brazil, the company re-structured and raised funds to develop the Storliden mine in Sweden. It purchased the Swedish Zinkgruvan Mine from Rio Tinto and then merged with Arcon International Resources for its Galmoy Mine in Ireland and Eurozinc for its Neves-Corvo mine in Portugal. The company subsequently purchased and operated the Eagle mine, Candelaria mine, and Chapada mine.
Mining is the biggest contributor to Namibia's economy in terms of revenue. It accounts for 25% of the country's income. Its contribution to the gross domestic product is also very important and makes it one of the largest economic sectors of the country. Namibia produces diamonds, uranium, copper, magnesium, zinc, silver, gold, lead, semi-precious stones and industrial minerals. The majority of revenue comes from diamond mining. In 2014, Namibia was the fourth-largest exporter of non-fuel minerals in Africa.
The mineral industry of Peru has played an important role in that nation's history and been integral to the country's economic growth for several decades. The industry has also contributed to environmental degradation and environmental injustice; and is a source of environmental conflicts that shape public debate on good governance and development.
Harshaw is a ghost town in Santa Cruz County in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Arizona. The town was settled in the 1870s, in what was then Arizona Territory. Founded as a mining community, Harshaw is named after the cattleman-turned-prospector David Tecumseh Harshaw, who first successfully located silver in the area. At the town's peak near the end of the 19th century, Harshaw's mines were among Arizona's highest producers of ore, with the largest mine, the Hermosa, yielding approximately $365,455 in bullion over a four-month period in 1880.
Schieffelin Hall is a building from the American Old West in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, the largest standing adobe structure still existent in the United States southwest. It was built in 1881 by Albert Schieffelin, brother of Tombstone founder Ed Schieffelin, and William Harwood as a first class opera house, theater, recital hall, and a meeting place for Tombstone citizens.
Natural resources are abundant in Kosovo. Kosovo is mainly rich in lignite and mineral resources such as: coal, zinc, lead, silver and chromium, but also with productive agricultural land. Kosovo is also rich in forests, rivers, mountains and soil; Kosovo is especially rich in coal, being aligned among European countries as the third with the largest coal reserves. Kosovo possesses around 14,700 billion tons of lignite in reserves, which aligns Kosovo as the country with the fifth largest lignite reserves in the world.
The Mineral Park mine is a large open pit copper mine located in the Cerbat Mountains 14 miles northwest of Kingman, Arizona, in the southwestern United States. A 2013 report said that Mineral Park represented one of the largest copper reserves in the United States and in the world, having estimated reserves of 389 million tonnes of ore grading 0.14% copper and 31 million oz of silver.
The mining industry of Yemen is at present dominated by fossil mineral of petroleum and liquefied natural gas (LNG), and to a limited extent by extraction of dimension stone, gypsum, and refined petroleum. Reserves of metals like cobalt, copper, gold, iron ore, nickel, niobium, platinum-group metals, silver, tantalum, and zinc are awaiting exploration. Industrial minerals with identified reserves include black sands with ilmenite, monazite, rutile, and zirconium, celestine, clays, dimension stone, dolomite, feldspar, fluorite, gypsum, limestone, magnesite, perlite, pure limestone, quartz, salt, sandstone, scoria, talc, and zeolites; some of these are under exploitation.