The McCracken Mine of far west-central Arizona is a significant old mining operation based primarily upon silver and lead, but deposits were found to be mixed with smaller amounts of other minerals including gold, zinc, manganese, copper, and barite (the salt of the reactive metal barium). The original silver-bearing outcrop was discovered on McCracken Peak in far southern Mohave County, Arizona by a prospector in 1874. The McCracken Mine was opened in 1875, drew miners rapidly, and produced about $1.5 million worth of silver between then and 1906, when the relatively small deposit played out. However on-and-off mining activities continued until 1960, when the final economically viable deposits of other minerals were depleted. The area has sat mostly idle in the Sonoran Desert sun since then.

These tailings piles of broken rock are old enough that they have started to accumulate populations of long-lived and slow-growing desert plants, including palo verde trees, saguaro cactus, ocotillos, and Nolina bigelovii, all of which take decades to reestablish themselves once disturbed off of a given site.

The population of workers at the site peaked at about 100 in the late 1800s, but there is very little sign of their activity in the form of any buildings – mostly a few cement foundations and some rusty equipment are all that remain amidst the maze of tailings piles and rough-cut steep roadways that accessed the 4 major veins of mineralization, which ranged from 6 to 30 feet wide and trended north-south across the face of the hills. The elevation here ranges from 3000 to 3300 feet (900-1000 meters).

I believe that this is the foundation of the main mill building at the McCracken Mine. It’s certainly the most substantial ruin remaining here, whatever it is.

This mine is located about 30 miles south of my cactus ranch. I’ve heard rumors that the Magnum Consolidated Mining Company, which still owns the claims at McCracken Mine as of this writing in September 2017, may eventually restart operations at the site in pursuit of manganese; but flat prices on the world market have evidently kept those plans on the shelf. If the manganese mine does eventually prove to be economically viable, however, it might lead to the paving of Alamo Road, which might be nice in some regards, although it would also probably mean a lot more heavy truck traffic, vehicular noise, power poles that disrupt my view, and less privacy. But it’s just hearsay, as far as I can tell.

This large cement box is downhill of the main mill site. I have no idea what it was used for. Note the recovering desert vegetation upon the once barren tailings piles and road cuts behind the box. This includes even old, slow-growing species such as saguaros and ocotillos and foothills palo verde trees.

I don’t know if the soil here has ever been tested for contamination, or what the results are if so, but it’s safe to assume that heavy metal mining does leave a lot of toxicity and disturbance around. Plants absorb some of it but that does not really clean anything up since heavy metal elements are not destroyed, just cycled around. (Unlike certain other manufactured chemicals that actually do degrade, elemental ones are at the lowest state of degradation they can be at.) For plants to successfully clean up heavy metal contaminants, the appropriate species would need to be grown, harvested, and removed to an off-site place for disposal. Plus they would likely need to be treated as toxic waste. All of this would take many years and lots of money, and I don’t see any of that happening, so whatever toxicity is here will remain here.

One friend joked that this is a washing machine. I see. At about 20 feet tall and wide, it was capable of laundering everyone’s clothes at once in the entire mining camp. Saved a lot of labor!   Another friend commented, “I’ve seen similar equipment that had a large gear inside with a huge valve that looked like a steering wheel. The smaller holes had water pipes. It was used to push water in areas that had limited water available. It increased pressure and flow.” Maybe that is true, I simply don’t know enough about mining operations to say.

For now, it’s interesting to visit an abandoned mining operation that ceased final operations 8 years before I was even born. In between the McCracken Mine and other mines along the Big Sandy River, there were more people living in southern Mohave County 130 years ago than inhabit the entire area today – the 2017 population of the region might be 50 people scattered across a handful of cattle ranches.

This view to the east shows the landscape of volcanism and metamorphic rocks that characterizes southern Mohave County, AZ. This is the area where the Sonoran Desert bioregion reaches its northwesternmost natural extent. The area is mostly uninhabited today save for a few isolated ranches and a handful of crazies such as myself.

Overview of part of the operations at the McCracken Mine, looking west.

Cattle are still grazed in the area, operating from ranches mostly to the east near the Big Sandy River Valley. These were foraging on a cleared flat area with a sizable cement parking pad, visible to the upper right.

Hillside vegetation characteristic of the northwestern Sonoran Desert, including foothills palo verde trees, saguaro cactus, ocotillos, and desert nolinas, which resemble yuccas but are in a different plant family taxonomically speaking.

The two distinctive sharp peaks in the middle distance are local landmarks known as the Castaneda Hills. Appearing as twins, they are easily identified from most directions and at significant distances, which helps with orientation if you happen to be 4 wheeling in the area.

It’s a bit melancholic for me to think of the arc of human history, and the unrecorded lives that were once lived amidst these quiet, isolated, cactus-studded hills. Even more mind-bending is the path of natural and geological history, the movements of the earth’s crust via plate tectonics that placed the mineral veins there hundreds of millions of years ago, and which were dug up and mined out in a few decades by our species. I too am just an extraordinarily temporary visitor here in the face of such unimaginable lengths of time. One day my house and garden of desert plants which I work so hard upon will be but a memory too, leaving nothing more than subtle traces upon the timeless landscape I call home….

Layers of rugged hills stretch across the horizon from Arizona across the Colorado River and into California. The dimmer orb of this sunset is caused by smoke from various California wildfires blazing to the west of here.

Time moves inexorably on.