Silver

specimen number:
2292201

location:
New Nevada Mine, Batopilas, Chihuahua, Mexico

description:
Spiky twinned crystals of native silver across the top of a calcite matrix.

The New Nevada mine, located in the historic Batopilas district of Chihuahua, Mexico, is an underground silver mine noted for its occurrences of native silver specimens. Geologically, the deposit is part of a low-sulfidation epithermal system consisting of calcite-fluorite veins hosted within Late Cretaceous to Tertiary volcanic rocks, primarily altered andesites and dacites of the Lower Volcanic Complex. Hydrothermal circulation along regional fault lines concentrated rich pockets of native silver, often occurring as wire, arborescent, or crystalline masses within the carbonate gangue. While the broader Batopilas district was worked extensively by Spanish colonizers starting in the 1630s and saw immense development in the late nineteenth century under the Batopilas Mining Company, specific operations at the New Nevada mine were actively pursued during the mining revivals of the early 1900s and worked intermittently through the mid-twentieth century. Commercial extraction has since ceased, with current activity limited to sporadic prospectors and local miners recovering silver specimens from old underground workings and dumps into the 2020s.

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