Northwest and Southwest Rockhounding: July 2013

Last week, I had a spare day to get out and about. My Grandson Darien and I took a trip over Chinook Pass to find the ghost town of Copper City. The U.S. Forest Service is talking about bulldozing the mill site, so I wanted to see the site and ore piles before that happened.

FS Road 1808 has been closed at the Mt. Aix trailhead since 2006 flooding and bridge washouts by Deep Creek until just recently. The trip to this site was a long 4.8 mile hike one way. Now it's only 1.5 miles because one of the bridges has been repaired. There is still road damage along the last 1.5 miles of roadway to the town site.

The directions to the site are as follows:

Coming from the west on Highway 410, travel approximately 35.6 miles from Chinook Pass to Bumping River Road/National Forest Road 1800. Turn right (south) onto this road. Drive 13.5 miles past Goose Prairie and Bumping Lake and keep left at the intersection, turning onto Forest Service road 1808 following Deep Creek. Continue on this road for approximately 4 miles until you reach the road closed sign and a quarry site on the right. Park at the quarry. The hike begins from here.

Coming from the east, drive approximately 27.9 miles from Naches on Highway 410 to Bumping River Road/National Forest Road 1800. Turn left (south) onto this road. Drive 13.5 miles past Goose Prairie and Bumping Lake and keep left at the intersection, turning onto Forest Service road 1808 following Deep Creek. Continue on this road for approximately 4 miles until you reach the road closed sign and a quarry site on the right. Park at the quarry. The hike begins from here.

Road Closed Sign at Quarry on FS 1808

The hike is a fairly easy hike on the level road with the crossing of one washout from a Deep Creek feeder stream and a few spots where the roadway has become a seasonal runoff. It could be fairly muddy during the wetter times of the year. It is 1.4 miles to the Copper City sign and turn off onto the Copper City Trail #654 which is an old mining road to the mines above Copper City. The townsite is only .1 mile beyond this turn off. The trail continues on above the townsite to the top of Miners Ridge.

Copper City Sign

The first thing you will see is the old bunkhouse ruins, now mostly fallen over on the east side of the roadway. A few cabins were once scattered throughout the area but have gradually been vandalized or taken over by the forest. As recently as 1960, a cabin was located directly across the road from the bunkhouse, but no sign of this building remains.

Copper City Bunkhouse Ruins

Heading past the bunkhouse toward the meadow, is the foundation and ruins of the mill. The only remains here are scattered timbers, cable, pipes and ore tailings from the ore processing. Presently the U.S. Forest Service is considering removing the tailings due to contamination of the stream running through the ore tailings. At the present time however, the ore tailings are still there.

According to a preliminary assessment report by the U.S. Forest Service, "In June and October, 1997, Washington Department of Ecology personnel collected water quality samples along an un-named tributary of Deep Creek, above and below the Copper City Millsite, and one sample was collected from Deep Creek just above the confluence with Bumping Lake (Rayforth and others, 2000). The samples along the un-named tributary were taken both above and below the old Copper City mill which has collapsed into the drainage. Water sampling revealed substantial increases in iron, zinc, arsenic, copper, and lead below the collapsed mill. Copper concentrations below the collapsed mill exceeded the state’s acute aquatic standard for surface waters. However, metals concentrations in Deep Creek just above Bumping Lake were similar to those above the mill."

..."The Site was extensively explored and developed by the Copper Mining Company which located 42 claims in the area in 1906. Development and production in the area focused around five mineralized shear zones within quartz monzonite/granodiorite cut by rhyodacite dikes. The most significant mineralized zone is explored at the Clara-Red Bird Mine by adits at three different levels and several surface workings. Total development in the area is estimated at over 1,000 ft. of underground workings (Huntting, 1956). The primary mineralization in the area occurs in mineralized shear zones cutting quartz monzonite and granidiorite host rock. Primary ore minerals were chalcopyrite, scheelite, molybdenite; gangue minerals include pyrite, arsenopyrite, quartz, calcite, and tourmaline (Derkey and others, 1990). Commodities produced included gold, silver, copper and tungsten (Derkey and others, 1990).

Copper City Mill Ruins

U.S. Bureau of Mines data indicate that 5 tons containing 34 ounces per ton (opt) silver and 1,486 lbs. of copper were shipped in 1917; 150 tons containing 1 opt gold, 99 opt. silver, and 4, 347 lbs copper were shipped in 1938; 650 lbs of concentrate containing 62.4% tungsten trioxide were shipped in 1940; and 5 tons containing 48 opt silver and 2,000 lbs copper were shipped in 1942 (Van Noy and others, 1983)."

Close-up View of Some of the Tailings

The tailings at the top of the mill site consist mostly of unprocessed ore. At the base of the mill, gravel sized tailings that have been processed through the mill appear to be contaminated with tron, zinc, arsenic, copper and lead. Maybe by processing, maybe just from leaching of the minerals from the ore itself. Whatever the cause, the tailings below appear uninteresting, while the ore above is scattered with visible samples of chalcopyrite, pyrite, azurite, and malachite.

It turned out to be a beautiful day, we came home with a few good ore samples and had a wonderful time.

Some of My Better Finds

Suggested Reading:

Mt Baker Snoqualmie Forest Service Topographical Map

Well, we enjoyed our last trip to Salmon Creek so much, that we just had to go back. We really want to find some of the bigger agates I keep seeing people find. Anyway, the day was gorgeous and we headed out again with a late start (as usual).

I decided we should check a different, less well known area of Salmon Creek, so we headed towards Merchant Road from highway 505. After we crossed the Salmon Creek bridge I noticed that the areas on the south side of the bridge had been clearcut very recently. We decided to stop and check it out, since so much ground was visible.

View Down Logging Road from Highway

We got out and headed down the road and right away discovered small chips of carnelian. I decided to check out all the tree stumps we passed, and sure enough I found this interesting little bit of river polished petrified wood.

Petrified Wood Hiding Near Tree Stumps

As we moved down the road towards the river, we started finding more and more pieces of carnelian in the road, where the rain had worn gullies in the road. I even found some really nice jasper.

View of Road Towards River and Highway

When we noticed how late it was getting, we decided to turn around and head back. Of course I had to check out one more spot where the loggers had made a clearing above the road. This was where I found my 10lb piece of petrified wood. I don't know how I knew to dig it up, but I'm glad I did. It almost looks like a big piece of a tree root. Wish I had a rock saw!