Seeing as how it was near 100ยบ every day, we watched the weather reports for a predicted day of overcast and planned to head to a higher elevation. After perusing the information I had found on a previous trip, I decided that the Cuba area copper mines would be a good place to go. At 8000+ feet of elevation, I figured it was bound to be cooler. So on Sunday, July 24th, My extended Albuquerque family, my Alaska sister and my hubby headed out to see what we could find.
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| Terrain in the Cuba Area |
We headed out of Albuquerque under bright sun but quickly ended up in overcast skies and rainy weather up in Cuba. It was wonderful. Temps were in the 70's. I felt like I was back in the Northwest. As we attempted to get to the rockhound spot I had decided on, we discovered that the road was closed due to extreme fire danger and the fires further on in the Los Alamos area. So, we turned around and I decided that we would head up every open dirt road heading North as we headed back toward Cuba. I knew there were lots of old mines in those hills and we had to get lucky sometime.
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| Looking For A Passable Road |
We headed up several roads that seemed to dead end in people's yards, including a road that was named Copper City Road, with collapsed buildings everywhere, but we finally ended up at a makeshift log barricade pretty far up one dirt road. We could see what looked like mine tailings in the hillsides. We parked and decided to check things out.
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| Checking out the Road |
Right away my lucky sister found a large piece of agatized petrified wood in the road. So we decided to stay a while. Pretty soon a large white truck appeared and stopped to see what we were doing. It turned out they were the owners of the land and told us that they owned everything around and up the road, right to the entrance to the Nacimiento mine and that we were welcome to search to our heart's content. An old gentleman with the group proudly told us that the hills surrounding us were mined by the Conquistadores in the early 1600's (or rather mined by the Indians they enslaved). He also told us that the Smithsonian had on display a petrified log infused with copper that had come from this same land. Boy were we excited.
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| Hills Behind the Horse Are Old Diggings From the 1600's |
We scoured the area and found azurite, malachite, pieces of copperized petrified wood, agatized petrified wood, thundereggs, rose quartz, citrine quartz and lots of very old glass. The area was amazing! All in all it turned out to be a wonderful day for everyone. And we all ended up with beautiful specimens to add to our collections.
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| A Few of My Finds |
Suggested Reading:
The Ore Deposits of New Mexico (1910)
New Mexico mines and minerals: World's fair ed., 1904
New Mexico Mines and Minerals ...: Being an Epitome of the Early Mining History
and Resources of New Mexican Mines, in the Various Districts, Down
to the Present Time ...
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