A patented Pb-W claim and former surface and underground mine, located in secs. 17-20, T10S, R16E, the northern portion of the Southern Belle group, about ½ mile South of Campo Bonito and 7 road miles from Oracle, at about 5,200 feet of altitude, on National Forest land. Owned by E.J. Ewing (1913); and, Mrs. Elizabeth L. Wood (1941). First produced 1913 and closed in 1953. Additional names which apply to this locality: Happy Thot; Gold Bug; General Hancock; Ewing property; Careless.

Mineralization is a 125 foot by a maximum width of 50 feet vein that strikes N65W and dips 50SW. Its footwall is a well-defined fault fissure whose age relative to the mineralization was not determined. This vein consists of coarsely crystalline, grayish-white quartz, cut by numerous branching veinlets of finer-grained white quartz. It contains irregular disseminations of scheelite, mostly as particles larger than 16 mesh in size. A pyrometasomatic, contact metamorphic deposit with irregular massive ore bodies. Alteration is silicification and dolomitization. Ore control was fault zone and intersections of faults (scheelite mineralization seems to occur at or near intersections of NW- and NE-trending fractures. Host rock is Escabrosa Limestone.

Ore bodies are concentrated near the Mogul Fault in silicified limestone and are irregularly shaped massive areas which have non-uniform distribution of scheelite. Scheelite occurs disseminated, in narrow stringers and in quartz-scheelite veinlets. Appreciable amounts of scheelite exist only in the hanging wall of the Mogul Fault. There is a small amount os scheelite in the footwall. Pink quartzite border are on all sides except on the NE.

The canyon here exposes thick-bedded, dark gray Paleozoic limestone underlain by Precambrian granite; the limestone-granite contact appears to be a low-angle fault genetically related to the Mogul fault, which crops out 300 feet North of the mine. Local features include the Mogul Fault Zone. Regional block faulting trending NNW. Regional trends include post-Cretaceous pre-Pliocene thrusts and high angle normal and reverse faults; Cretaceous-Tertiary intrusives and consequent faulting.

Workings include a 110 foot inclined shaft; 205 feet of drifts, and 88 feet of crosscuts on the 100 foot level; two short adits, and one haulage adit. One 20 foot shaft. One 65 by 45 foot open cut from 12 to 50 feet deep, with a stope to the West. Several shallow pits. The haulage adit is beneath the surface 'glory hole' that is about 35 feet wide. Work began in 1952 financed by DMEA contract. Mine shut down in 1953.

Production was about 5 tons of concentrates at 67% WO3, plus an additional 8 tons of concentrates (1940's). During the years 1939 to 1943, concentrates contained 65 to 75% WO3.

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Link to USGS MRDS:	10039524

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References