Chrysocolla with Azurite

specimen number:
2102377

location:
Morenci Mine, Greenlee Co., Arizona, USA

description:
Botryoidal blue crystallized azurite across the front of matrix, these in turn partially coated by green botryoidal chrysocolla. Colorful and in good condition.

The Morenci mining district, situated in Greenlee County, Arizona, represents the largest copper-producing operation in North America and one of the largest porphyry copper deposits in the world. Geologically, the deposit is centered on a complex series of Laramide-age porphyritic granodiorite and monzonite intrusions that breached ancient Paleozoic sedimentary limestones and Precambrian basement rocks. Hydrothermal alteration generated a vast, low-grade disseminated copper ore body, which subsequently underwent profound supergene enrichment when descending meteoric waters leached near-surface copper and re-deposited it at depth as thick blankets of secondary chalcocite and covellite above primary chalcopyrite zones. Historically, the deposit was discovered in 1864 by a scouting party of volunteer cavalrymen, and organized underground vein mining for silver and high-grade copper began in 1872 under the Longfellow Copper Mining Company, later consolidating under the Detroit Copper Company and Phelps Dodge Corporation. Underground operations gradually phased out in the late 1930s as extraction transitioned exclusively to massive, highly mechanized open-pit quarrying at the Morenci Pit starting in 1937. The implementation of large-scale run-of-mine dump leaching and solution extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW) processing technology in 1987 revolutionized operations by allowing the economic recovery of copper from vast stockpiles of low-grade oxide ores. Under the ownership of Freeport-McMoRan, which acquired the property in 2007, the massive continuous open-pit complex and integrated milling and leaching facilities remain fully active, driving multi-billion-pound copper extractions through 2026.

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