Copper Valley Mine, Cheshire, New Haven County, Connecticut, USAi

Regional Level Types
Copper Valley Mine	Mine
Cheshire	Town
New Haven County	County
Connecticut	State
USA	Country

In what was then a part of Wallingford, but now in the southeast corner of Cheshire, one John Parker, in 1711, was reported to have found copper and perhaps other valuable metals on his farm, which was on “Milkingyard Hill”....

Shortly after this, William Partridge of Newbury and Jonathan Belcher of Boston, merchant, both of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, entered into Articles of Agreement with the town of Wallingford for the opening of mines there, the miners, artificers and laborers connected with them to be exempted from all civil and military duties and all taxes; the lease to run eight years, with the privilege of renewal for a period “not exceeding 500 years in the whole”.

October of 1854 Truman Bristol granted Sanderson Smith mining rights on a 30 acre tract of land at 'Copper Valley'. Smith failed to meet his obligations, and in September of 1866 Bristol gave Charles Munson and Leonard Pardee the entire and exclusive right of mining, quarrying, digging, and excavating, for minerals and metals...

There is practically nothing regarding the amount of ore raised. Munson seems to have worked the mine himself part of the time, and on other occasions to have leased the property. In 1874 Nathan Peck and Isaac Anderson, lessees, agreed to spend $25,000 'because of the increasing flow of water in shafts and levels'; to deepen the shaft somewhat for a water receiver; to extend easterly the drift on the line of the east and west vein; and to install a portable steam hoisting engine.

Munson took great interest in the mine, and personally went to great lengths to make it a success. Ore of a superior quality was obtained, but the shafts, sunk to a depth of more than one hundred feet, and the drifts run from them, encountered water in greater quantity than could be controlled. Munson is said to have sunk $50,000 of his own money in the project, and various lessees also spent substantial sums, but to no avail, and the leased property eventually reverted to Truman Bristol. However, Mr. George R. Johnson of Copper Valley said that Mr. Munson, at that time in his ninetieth year, wrote him that he had not lost faith in the mine; that he felt that they not gone down deep enough 'to remove the cover off the precious metal'.

It was commenced in 1812 [sic - he must mean 1712], by commissioners appointed by the King's bench. Tradition says that a shaft ninety feet deep was sunk, and of a size sufficient in two places to receive a large dwelling house. Two ship-loads of ore, it is also reported, were transmitted at this period to England. Some attempts were made to renew the enterprise early the present century, but were soon abandoned. The mine is at present owned by Mr. AARON BELLAMY of Otsego, N. Y., who is a descendant of the individual interested in the first exploration. This gentleman, aided by a company in Canada, commenced the clearing of the mine in 1836. The shaft was completely occupied by timbers and rubbish. A small steam-engine is made use of for lifting out the water. They had descended about twenty-five feet in August last, and among the materials brought up, good vitreous copper [chalcocite] was observed, often associated with heavy spar [barite], and occasionally in distinct crystals (578b). On the north side of the shaft, a dyke of trap is visible, having the width of three feet, in contact with which the ore seems to occur. The intersected sandstone for several feet on each side, is more or less stained with malachite.

Large chunks of chalcocite and bornite covered with malachite are still available both on the dumps and in the exposed vein in trap rock. Calcite crystals (dog-tooth spar) are common; talc is rare.