Carbonate Mine (Carbonite Mine), Warm Spring, Carbonate Mining District, Panamint Mts (Panamint Range), Inyo County, California, USAi

Regional Level Types
Carbonate Mine (Carbonite Mine)	Mine
Warm Spring	Spring
Carbonate Mining District	Mining District
Panamint Mts (Panamint Range)	Mountain Range
Inyo County	County
California	State
USA	Country

A former Pb mine located in the SE¼SE¼ sec. 17, T22N, R1E, SBM (discerned from topo map), 5.7 km (3.5 miles) NE of Warm Spring, on the eastern margin of the Panamint Range.

NOTE: This mine is clumped together with the Queen of Sheba Mine in the USGS MRDS database. Greene, Linda I. (1981) initially presents it as a separate mine with a separate history, predating the Queen of Sheba, then describes how the Queen of Sheba is an extension of the same ore zone and how the two operations became one larger mining effort even though there is about ¼ mile distance between them. The coordinates provided are discerned from the topo map which reflects a group of unnamed mining symbols in the location described by Greene.

Workings include surface and underground openings (the topo map reflects 4 adit symbols and 1 prospect pit symbol).

The Carbonate Mine is situated on an east-trending ridge of the Panamint Range on the west side of Death Valley at an elevation of about 1,200 feet. Its workings are about 1/4 of a mile north of the Queen of Sheba Lead Mine tunnel and mill ruins. The area, about thirty-two miles south of Furnace Creek Ranch and thirty-seven miles west of Shoshone, is reached via a four-mile-long dirt road veering off southwest from Salt Well about 1/8 mile south of the Galena Canyon-West Side Road intersection. The track is now seldom used and extremely rutted from water and wind erosion.

The Carbonate Mine is the earlier of the two discoveries on this site. In the summer of 1907, when Clarence E. Eddy was exploring the southwest slopes of Death Valley, he and some associates began to develop a certain large galena outcrop about one mile from what later became the townsite of Carbonite. News of the strike attracted other prospectors to the scene; among these were Frank Stockton and a mining engineer named Chester A. Pray, who located the "Carbonite" Mine in 1908. The property was probably named for the type of ore found there--lead carbonate with silver.

The town and camp of Carbonite sprang up as a result of the interest manifested in the Carbonite Mine by Ed Chafey and Jack Salsberry (variously spelled Salisbury, Saisbury, Salisberry, and Salsburry), who formed the Carbonate Lead Mines Company of Death Valley with general offices in Manhattan, Nevada. The problem that had hindered development of the area in the early 1900s--lack of transportation to a railhead--was immediately approached and just as quickly solved by the enterprising Salsberry. The mine was located about forty miles from the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad station at Zabriskie, so Salsberry proceeded to build a wagon road from Salt Well, four miles east of the mine, over the Black Mountains to the railroad, enabling the ore to be hauled by freight teams about thirty miles across Death Valley to the Amargosa Range where a gasoline tractor hauled it the last sixteen miles to town. (This is the same route followed by today's Salsbury Pass road.)

Salsberry's company next negotiated for 150 head of stock to transport the ore to the spot where it could be taken over by the tractor. It was anticipated that with this system ten carloads of ore a week could be sent to Salt Lake City smelters. Forty to fifty head of horses and mules were acquired at first, working as four ten-animal teams, with plans made to utilize 200 more, each animal hauling half a ton. The capacity of the tractor was about ten tons, which would be increased as the road improved and was packed down with use. Intense heat was a serious problem for the mine workers, the thermometer often reaching 130°F. in the shade and at least once as high as 164°F. To protect themselves, the men lived and slept in the mine tunnels, which also contained the kitchen and boarding house.

By late fall of 1913 only two carloads of ore from the mine had left the Zabriskie station, but further development work was to be carried on throughout the winter months by an increased force of men. Because the ore body appeared extensive and rich in minerals, a loading chute for the large amount of ore expected to arrive soon from the mine was erected at Zabriskie by the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. By 1914 the camp was being referred to as the "latest sensation of the western mining world." and the presence of extensive nearby deposits of lead, silver, gold, and copper seemed to promise another desert bonanza. The Carbonite Mine had now been developed to a depth of 300 feet, with lead and silver ore values reputedly running as high as two million dollars. The transportation force now comprised sixty mules and a twenty- or twenty-five-ton traction engine. (It was rumored at this time in the newspapers that the Southern Pacific Railroad was in the process of constructing a branch within fifteen miles of the town. Such a project never materialized.) The nearby camp was said to be "a typical desert metropolis, constructed with tents, rocks, tincans, dry goods boxes, whiskey bottles and anything that comes handy." Water for domestic use was hauled in from Zabriskie.

As was the case with most desert boom towns of the time there were those who urged restraint and moderation in the assessment of future production:

A pretty story about the starting [of] a boom town in the heart of Death Valley is going the rounds. Diamondfield Jack Davis is mentioned as hiking to the new Eldorado, and it is not difficult to trace his fine Italian hand in the invention which has so much foundation as the beautiful mirages that are found in that section of the universe . . . . The truth about Carbonate Camp is good enough, but it will require time before the properties of that section are on a highly profitable basis. The question of transportation remains to be solved, and nothing short of the construction of a railroad can answer the purpose of hauling the ores to market. The traction engine that was supposed to work such wonders has not delivered the tonnage which was relied upon to make the investment more than fairly profitable and no substitute has yet been found for the humble horse and mule in negotiating the sands of the desert. A proposition to build a railroad is under contemplation by a combination of salt interests and the men behind Carbonate and, until this line is constructed, there will be no rush to Death Valley.

Evidently the failure of the traction engine to transport a satisfactory amount of ore resulted in the addition of two motor trucks to the route.

Four months later Salsberry's transportation fleet had been increased to sixteen large trucks that carried ore daily from the Carbonate Mine to Zabriskie, which, incidentally, was now teeming with activity occasioned by incoming men and freight and outgoing ore shipments. Fifteen mines were operating in the vicinity and utilizing the little railroad station as their supply point. Currently shipping one carload of ore per day, the Carbonate Mine was considered profitable since lead was bringing from $57.50 to $75.00 per ton. Salsberry had even constructed a small hotel for his workmen at a midpoint between his mine and Zabriskie (its exact location could not be determined by the writer), where two cooks were required to serve just the sixty truckers employed by the company. Twelve more trucks were being ordered around this time.

In August another in a continuing series of reports on the progress of the Carbonate Lead Mines Company appeared. Only three miners were required to keep full the ten trucks, of 6-1/2-ton capacity each, that were currently hauling from the property. Ore from the mine, which had now undergone about 900 feet of development work and which showed a vein from 2-1/2 to 15 feet wide, was averaging about 37% lead, 20 ozs. in silver, and $5 in gold, resulting in a value of about $40 per ton of ore. Since transportation averaged only about $12 per ton, the company was realizing a nice profit from this mine.

In 1917 the workings at the Carbonate Mine were described by the California state mineralogist: development consisted of three tunnels (upper, 100 feet long, 60 feet below apex; second, 150 feet long, 30 feet below first; lower [main], 300 feet long, 100 feet below second); the ore recovered was dumped into a bin outside the lower tunnel, from which it was loaded into four-ton motor trucks. Because these shipments were now costing about $15 a ton, the trucks were being replaced by caterpillar-type tractors--a move that would hopefully lower transportation costs. About forty tons of ore a week, averaging 35 percent to 40 percent lead, were being shipped to the U.S. Smelting and Refining Company in Salt Lake City. Only four men were employed by the mining company, whose home office was now evidently in San Francisco.

From 1915 to 1918 the Carbonate Mine produced about 11,000 tons of ore averaging 15 percent lead and S oz. of silver per ton. By 1920 the operation was reported to be idle, although one reference during this time period mentions the "caterpilar" road to the Carbonate Mine as being a good one, which tends to indicate that the mine was active sporadically. The Carbonate Mine was again mentioned in 1923, with the implication that it was still producing.

In that year notices were appearing on the transfer of ownership of several mining locations in the general area of the Carbonate Mine. On 1 June a quitclaim deed was granted by R.(oger) H. Downer, A. I. D'Arcy, and Nettie H. D'Arcy of Goldfield to the New Sutherland Divide Mining Company, the Nevada corporation that superseded the Carbonate Lead Mines Company in ownership of the Carbonate property, for the July 1, 2, and 3 lode mining claims "situated 10 miles south of Bennett Hole, on the east slope of the Panamint Mountains, in an unknown mining district; also July 4, 5, 6 and 7 lode mining claims, situated 4 miles west of Salisbury Wells, on the east slope of Panamint Mountains, in an unknown mining district."

In November 1923 an M. (?) H. Downer of Goldfield deeded to the New Sutherland Divide Mining Company the Ajax Nos. 1-3 lode mining claims five miles southwest of "Salisbury's Well." The following month the U.S. Smelting, Refining. & Mining Company contracted with the New Sutherland Divide Mining Company to take over operation of their lead mine, the smelting company realizing 51% of the profits. The wartime production of the mine had been 1,950 tons of lead and 97,000 ozs. of silver, and a profitable amount of ore still existed on its dumps.

It appears that the Queen of Sheba workings, about 1,500 feet southwest of the Carbonate Mine, were a further extension of exploratory work on the latter and were in the same ore zone, so that the two actually comprised one extensive mining operation.

In 1938 the Carbonate Mine was still owned by the New Sutherland Divide Mining Company, but was now under lease to a John P. Madison and H. L. Hellwig, who had evidently been shipping from there for the last seven years. In May their equipment consisted of trucks, a compressor, air drills, and cars; ten men were employed. The ore was still hauled by truck to Zabriskie for shipment to the Salt Lake City smelters. Development on the Carbonate Claim consisted of a series of stoped tunnels to a vertical depth of 150 feet and a long crosscut tunnel below which no ore had been encountered. The Queen of Sheba had a tunnel 1,000 feet long with a few crosscuts--no ore had been developed here. By October Madison had crosscut west about 40 feet 200 feet above the old tunnel and had stoped some ore from 2 to 8 feet wide in drifts from the crosscut. The ore now being found was generally of a higher grade than in the past. The property was being only sporadically worked, however.

The next few years are scanty in information on the mine, which remained mostly inactive. A letter from the Death Valley National Monument superintendent to a Mr. D. C. Wray of Las Vegas concerning the possibilities of improvement of the road into the Carbonate Mine indicates that some mining activity was continuing here during World War II. The New Sutherland Divide Company resumed work in 1944, and after extensive sampling, the mine was reopened by means of three 100-foot crosscut adits with many drifts; rises totaling 2,500 feet were driven at 50-foot vertical intervals. A year later the Mining Journal reported that the New Sutherland Divide Company had suspended operations for the summer, but that about sixty tons of ore had been shipped daily from the Queen of Sheba prior to that, the material being trucked to Manix, California, for rail shipment to the smelter.(Greene, Linda I. (1981): III.A.12.a)(1-5))

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