Montgomery Talc Mine (Panamint Mine; Montgomery Mine; Montgomery Panamint Mine), Needle Peak, Panamint Mts (Panamint Range), Inyo County, California, USAi
This page is currently not sponsored. Click here to sponsor this page.
Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):
35° 55' 15'' North , 116° 58' 60'' West
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):
Type:
Köppen climate type:
Nearest Settlements:
| Place | Population | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Searles Valley | 1,739 (2011) | 41.6km |
Nearest Clubs:
Local clubs are the best way to get access to collecting localities
Local clubs are the best way to get access to collecting localities
| Club | Location | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Searles Lake Gem and Mineral Society, Inc. | Trona, California | 39km |
A former talc-soapstone mine located in T21N, R1E, SBM, about 5.5 km (3.4 miles) NE of Needle Peak (coordinates of record), S of Anvil Creek, on National Park Service wilderness land (Death Valley National Park/Death Valley Wilderness). MRDS database stated accuracy for this location is 5,000 meters. The exact location of this occurrence is in obvious doubt.
The Panamint Mine, about one-half mile south of the mouth of Warm Spring Canyon, is located a short distance west among a group of ridges between Warm Spring and Anvil canyons. The majority of the five claims comprising the property were located in 1935 by Ernest Huhn, probably around the same time he and Louise Grantham were staking the claims that later became the Grantham Mine in Warm Spring Canyon. Southern California Minerals Company of Los Angeles later acquired the property, concentrating most of its sporadic activity in the years between 1952 and 1957. Talc output of the property to 1968 has been around 4,700 tons. It is now owned by Pfizer, Inc.
Today the Panamint Talc Group consists of ten unpatented claims: Panamint #3-5 claim, Panamint Millsite, Panamint Millsite No. 1, Panamint Talc Nos. 1-2 lode mining claims, and Panamint Talc Nos. 6-8. The mining area is reached via a dirt road jutting off to the south at the mouth of Warm Spring Canyon. (This route continues on south through Wingate Wash.) About one-quarter mile south on this road are two structures of recent origin. One is a large, two-room, corrugated-metal residence building with a poured concrete floor and plywood walls covered with graffiti, containing two metal bunks. The other empty structure is a small wood and composition-paper shack.
The road turns west from here for about one-half mile, becoming a four-wheel-drive route, and leads to an abandoned ore bin and adit. Evidence of exploratory activity is evident for a half mile along the south wall of the canyon. At its upper end is a large three-chute ore bin positioned on a truck-loading level with the remains of a single ore chute hanging from the hillside above. Ore cars evidently trammed the ore to the surface of the mine and outside, proceeding up an inclined set of tracks and dumping their load into the single chute, which emptied into cars on the second level; these cars then dumped the ore into the lower three-chute bin, from which it was guided into trucks for transport. The workings in this area consist of an inclined shaft about sixty feet long with a twenty-foot drift extending west from the bottom of the shaft. Above the mine portal on the hillside is a frame equipment shelter. These are the oldest workings on the Panamint property, dating from the early 1950s; they produced only a small amount of talc. Most of the talc shipped from this group has come from a deposit about 1,000 feet south-southwest of this shaft--an area mined by an open cut in the mid-1950s.(Greene, Linda I. (1981): III.A.6.a))
This one-half-mile-square mining area is located about sixteen miles west of West Side Road and about 4.3 miles northwest of Warm Spring (Indian Ranch). The two main sets of workings lie between about 3,700 and 4,450 feet in elevation and are reached via an access road trending for about two miles uphill north from the Butte Valley intersection. The works cover the ridge between the Warm Spring and Galena canyon drainages and are the most westerly of the talc sites within Death Valley National Monument. The Galena and Warm Spring canyon areas have been the source of all talc produced from the monument since 1974. The fourteen claims comprising the first discoveries here were filed by Owen Montgomery and Harrison P. Gower around 1940. The Sierra Talc Company later leased the property, which is now owned by Cyprus Industrial Minerals Company and consists of nineteen contiguous unpatented lode mining claims: Amargosa #1-2, Amargosa No. 3, Amargosa #4, Amargosa Nos. 5-10, Sunrise, Sunrise Nos. 1-3, Panamint, Panamint No. 2, Frances Nos. 1-2, and Snow Flake. Location of these claims spanned a period of thirty-eight years, from March 1936 to September 1974.
In the three years during World War II when high-quality talc, was restricted to use in electrical insulators, the mine was worked steadily because its product could be used as a substitute for steatite-grade talc in non-strategic areas. This has been the only period of sustained underground production. After 1946 operations were intermittent and mainly assessment oriented in nature. Through 1959 only about 6,000 tons of commercial talc had been produced. Production now is estimated to average 25,000 tons per year, meaning a total production of 175,000 tons since pit mining was initiated. The deposit is considered to be nearly half mined out at this time. [280]
Because of the instability of the talc-containing bodies in the area, work underground proved extremely inefficient, requiring extensive timbering and resulting in only a small recovery rate. In 1971, therefore, a decision was made to turn to surface mining, which seemed warranted by indications of heavy reserves found through exploratory drilling. Since 1972 Cyprus Industrial Minerals Company, a division of Cyprus Mines Corporation, has been developing a pit with a projected depth of 300 feet on its southeast side and measuring 850 feet square in perimeter. Access will be at the northwest end. The total area disrupted so far by mining operations totals about 64.5 acres.
The Panamint Mine today is active and producing about 2,000 tons per month. Because it was in full production before passage of the 28 September 1976 act repealing the mineral entry provision for certain National Park Service areas, the present operators have been authorized to continue operations temporarily pending approval of their proposed Plan of Operations. The proposal is to continue open-pit mining until mid-1985 when the remaining 200,000 tons of recoverable ore will be mined out. [281]
b) Present Status
The older section of workings (Montgomery Mine), about 200 feet square in area, probably dates from the early 1940s. Visible from the entrance are one adit trending south and an inclined shaft to the east. The underground workings consist of an east-trending 250-foot-long drift connected to the surface at its west end by a south-trending adit and also joined to a 150-foot-long crosscut and winze east of this adit. Most of the salable talc is thought to have been removed from these areas, although the entire extent of the deposit is uncertain. The tendency of the ground to fracture and the resultant hazardous underground working conditions have precluded further work here. [282]
Remnants of a tramway remain leading southwest around the ridge from this early mine to a four-chute wooden ore bin with metal flashing still in place. Immediately north of this bin on the hillside is some wooden debris--possibly the ruins of an earlier tramway and chute system. A front-dumping swivel ore car was found overturned near the chute remains. The more recent open-pit work with large terrace cuts visible on top of the ridge east of the Montgomery works, at an altitude of about 4,400 feet, involves blasting work and benching into the ridge. Currently the pit measures about 700 feet by 800 feet. Downslope and southwest of the chute remains and west of the pit in a saddle of the same ridge is the stockpile area for talc removed from the latter operation. The ore is transported by truck to mills at Los Angeles ,and Keeler, or to Dunn Siding, California, for shipment to mills in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Mexico City, Mexico.(Greene, Linda I. (1981): III.A.11.a) & b))
Local rocks include Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits.
Workings include unspecified underground openings.
Select Mineral List Type
Standard Detailed Gallery Strunz Chemical ElementsCommodity List
This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.Mineral List
1 valid mineral.
Gallery:
List of minerals arranged by Strunz 10th Edition classification
| Group 9 - Silicates | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ⓘ | Talc | 9.EC.05 | Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 |
List of minerals for each chemical element
| H | Hydrogen | |
|---|---|---|
| H | ⓘ Talc | Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 |
| O | Oxygen | |
| O | ⓘ Talc | Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 |
| Mg | Magnesium | |
| Mg | ⓘ Talc | Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 |
| Si | Silicon | |
| Si | ⓘ Talc | Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 |
Other Databases
| Link to USGS MRDS: | 10212351 |
|---|
Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality
North AmericaContinent
North America PlateTectonic Plate
- Basin and Range BasinsBasin
- Mojave DomainDomain
- Southern Basin and RangeWide Rift
USA
- Death Valley National ParkNational Park
- Sierra NevadaMountain Range
This page contains all mineral locality references listed on mindat.org. This does not claim to be a complete list. If you know of more minerals from this site, please register so you can add to our database. This locality information is for reference purposes only. You should never attempt to
visit any sites listed in mindat.org without first ensuring that you have the permission of the land and/or mineral rights holders
for access and that you are aware of all safety precautions necessary.
References
(n.d.) Minerals Availability System (MAS), U.S. Bureau of Mines.file ID #0060270410
