Gold Road Mining District, Oatman Mining District, Black Mountains, Mohave County, Arizona, USAi

Regional Level Types
Gold Road Mining District	Mining District (Inactive)
Oatman Mining District	Mining District
Black Mountains	Mountain Range
Mohave County	County
Arizona	State
USA	Country

The Gold Road district lies about 24 miles southwest of Kingman, mainly on the west slope of the mountains. It extends from Meadows, on Meadow Creek, at the east base of the range, northwestward to the Moss and Golden Star mines, about 6 miles beyond the crest. It has a length of about 10 miles and a width of about 4 miles. The principal camp, local supply point, and center of activity is Gold Road, situated on the western slope of the range, about 1 mile from the crest, at about 2,900 feet elevation and at the head of Silver Creek. It is 16 miles northeast of Needles, Cal., and is reached by wagon road from Kingman, via Gold Road (formerly Sitgreaves) Pass. Gold Road (PL IX) has a population of about 350. It is equipped with modern improvements, is well kept, and is plentifully supplied with excellent water pumped from Meadows.

History. Mineral was first discovered in the district early in the sixties by John Moss and party, who found rich gold ore at what has since been known as the Moss mine, 4 miles northwest of Gold Road, near the old Camp Mohave trail. About the same time, or a little later, the Miller mine, formerly known as the Parsons mine, and especially as the Hardy mine, 2 miles northwest-west of Gold Road, was discovered, and for a long time these two mines were the principal properties in the district. They were at once worked and soon began to produce, the ore being at first shipped or milled in arrastres, and a little later some of it was treated in the Moss mill, which was built on the Colorado at the mouth of Silver Creek, about 7 miles west of the Moss mine.

A decade later, owing to the discovery of rich silver-gold ore in the Cerbat Range, the district became and for a long time remained quiet, until the decline in the market value of silver stimulated gold mining. The present activities began with the opening of the Gold Road mine and vein about 1902.

Topography and drainage. The district ranges in elevation from 2,000 feet on the west and about 3,000 feet on the east to 4,500 feet at the top of the range. The range portion, which is about 3 miles in width, is rugged, particularly on the west, being marked by precipitous fault scarps, deep gulches, and canyons. Here in a horizontal distance of about 1½ miles the surface falls off from 4,500 feet elevation at the crest to 2,500 feet on Silver Creek just below Gold Road. The remainder of the area consists mainly of low, rounded, outlying mountains or hills, open washes, and gravel-covered gentle slopes or mesas.

The principal outliers are the Hardy Mountains, a low group situated on the southwest about 3 miles west of Gold Road, to the south of Silver Creek. They are about 3 miles in diameter and rise about 600 feet above the surrounding country. Two miles north of the Hardy Mountains and Silver Creek is a much smaller group the Moss Hills. On the east the drainage flows principally by way of Meadow Creek into Sacramento Valley, and on the west through Silver Creek into the Colorado.

Geology. Tertiary volcanic rocks prevail, particularly in the eastern .or range portion of the district. They practically constitute the range, and are in places covered by rhyolite and younger basalt. On the west occur also local areas of the pre-Cambrian gneisses, syenite, granite porphyry and micro-pegmatite, greenstone agglomerate, and overlying sheets of supposed Tertiary conglomerate and younger gravel and lava flows.

Deposits. The deposits, which number about a dozen, are chiefly gold-bearing fissure veins or lodes. They occur in the lower part of the undifferentiated volcanic series, the green chloride andesite, and the granite porphyry and micro-pegmatite described on page 31, and also along certain of their contacts, where rhyolite is usually the intrusive. They consist of two main types those in which the gangue is chiefly quartz and adularia and those in which it is chiefly calcite. The former, which seem to be the older and carry the best values, occur mostly in the undifferentiated volcanic rocks and in granite porphyry and have a general northwesterly or northwestwesterly trend; the latter occur mainly in the green chloritic andesite and trend nearly north. The most important of the former type is the Gold Road vein; of the latter, the Pasadena and Mossback veins.

The veins in the green chloritic andesite in both the Gold Road and Vivian districts occur mostly in fissures, which seem to be peculiar to this formation and do not as a rule penetrate the underlying older andesite. The origin of the metallic contents was due to thermo-aqueous processes. In general the quartz and values favor the hanging wall, where the quartz feeds in by oblique stringers, and the spar or calcite favors the foot wall.