Wulfenite with Calcite

specimen number:
2262345

location:
Glove Mine, Santa Cruz Co., Arizona, USA

description:
Bladed crystals of caramel colored wulfenite in a cluster with minor calcite. Minimal damage present, this still in good condition. Note that the previous data card, this shown at the end of the video, gives the locality in Yuma County. From the 1950s.

The Glove mine, situated on the southwestern flank of the Santa Rita Mountains within the Tyndall district of Santa Cruz County, Arizona, is a past producer of lead, zinc, and silver that is widely known for its spectacular solution-cavity mineralizations. Geologically, the deposit is a localized carbonate replacement system where Early Laramide latite porphyry sills and hydrothermal fluids intruded faulted and tilted Paleozoic limestones belonging to the Naco Group. The primary, deep-seated sulfide mineralization consists of argentiferous galena, sphalerite, pyrite, and chalcopyrite, but extensive near-surface leaching and deep oxidation within permeable fault zones created large, cavernous solution pipes and channels filled with sand carbonate ores, smithsonite, cerussite, and well-crystallized wulfenite. Following its initial discovery in 1907, the property was officially claimed in 1911 and worked intermittently by various operators, including the Copper Queen Mining Company through 1917, before seeing its most aggressive industrial-scale underground development by the Sunrise Mining Company between 1951 and 1959. Corporate production faded in the late twentieth century, with final commercial ore shipments ending around 1976, and while the mine remained accessible to intermittent specimen leasing into the 1980s and 1990s, a severe subterranean fire in 2011 caused extensive structural damage that permanently ended all collecting access.

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