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The Yellow Pine Mining Company owned a group of 12 mining claims (No. 12, pl. 30) that cover most of the ravine locally known as Porphyry Gulch, 4 miles west of Goodsprings, in the Goodsprings Mining District of Clark County. In 1901, the Yellow Pine Mining Company was formed, which consolidated ownership of most of the area mines and built a mill in Goodsprings.
The first ore shipped from the claim, 18 tons of oxidized copper ore, was obtained in 1906 from a shallow shaft 500 feet south of the Hale shaft (Prairie Flower mine), but no connection of this body with those of zinc carbonate that have made the mine famous has ever been established. Faint veinlets of brown jasper in the dolomitized limestone were the only evidence of ore near the shaft that yielded the copper ore; similar veinlets also crop out near the old shaft that encountered the first bodies of zinc ore in the mine. Small bodies of mixed lead and zinc ore were found in 1907 in the old shaft 200 feet east of the Hale shaft (Prairie Flower mine), but the first large body of zinc ore was struck in this shaft at 110 feet. This body was followed southwest and led to the successive exploration of the deeper bodies farther southwest and in 1912 to the sinking of the Hale shaft (Prairie Flower mine), from which all the ore bodies in the southern part of the mine to the ninth level were mined. In 1916, when conditions in the southern part of the mine were discouraging, exploratory work from the vertical shaft in the northern part of the third level encountered the ore body in the 350-foot stope, and from that time the development has been progressively northward. Early in 1922 most of the ore known south of the porphyry dike on the 900-foot level had been mined, when a raise from the 900-foot level north of the dike struck two large bodies of ore. The company then sank a new shaft in 1924. The interval 1911-28 is when the mine was most productive.
With decline in price of metals, the Yellow Pine Mining Co. ceased operations in 1931 and the mine lay idle for 2 years. The U. S. Smelting, Refining, and Mining Exploration Co. took lease and option from the Yellow Pine Co. in 1934, resuming operations that have continued intermittently until the present, though under different managements. In 1936 the lease passed to C. K. Barns, and in February 1939, the property was taken under lease and option by Harold Jarman. From May until December, 1942, Basil Prescott held the property under lease from Jarman. From September, 1942, to January, 1943, 64 core-drill holes having a total length of 5,161 feet were drilled by the U. S. Bureau of Mines. In December, 1942, the lease and option passed to the Coronado Copper and Zinc Co., which continued operations until the spring of 1949. In 1944, the Bureau of Mines Carried out a Second exploration project, drilling 35 core-drill holes with a total length of 5,113 feet. In spite of recent extensive exploration based on repeated examinations by geologists and engineers, the production at the Yellow Pine has not maintained the level reached during early years of mining, and no large ore bodies have been discovered since 1922.
Glossary of Terms
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