Ferber Mining District, Tooele County, Utah, USAi

Regional Level Types
Ferber Mining District	Mining District
Tooele County	County
Utah	State
USA	Country

The Ferber mining district lies in the Ferber Hills of westernmost Tooele County about 34 mi south of Wendover and immediately south of Utah Peak. Mineralization was discovered in the Ferber district in 1880 in Elko County, Nevada (Hill, 1916). The district had intermittent production from the 1890s until 1957 and all the reported production came from the Nevada side of the district. The total recorded production, all from Nevada, is approximately 2000 tons of Cu, Pb, and Ag ore (Hill, 1916; Smith, 1976). The Martha Washington Cu-Pb mine (Nevada) is the largest producer.
The Ferber Hills are geologically situated in the east-central Basin and Range Province. The mineralization in the Ferber district is associated with a roughly 1-sq-mi porphyritic quartz monzonite stock and gabbro (?) dikes that lie mostly in Nevada. Although the stock is undated, it is mapped as Cretaceous in age by Coats (1987). The stock and mineralization are both elongate in an east-northeast direction. The mineralization includes small skarns and veins. The main Cu-Pb-Ag ores were locally anomalous in As, Bi, Sn, and Zn (Smith, 1976). Mineralization in the Utah section of the district is limited to a few prospect pits and short shafts exploring weakly altered and mineralized Paleozoic carbonates, possibly Pennsylvanian Ely Limestone or Permian Fergus Mountain Formation (Coats, 1987). Reported ore minerals from the Utah prospects include malachite, limonite, jarosite, and scorodite. No references to the Utah prospects are found outside the Utah Mineral Occurrence System (UMOS).