Two Mine Sites Along the Arizona New Mexico border near Duncan Arizona

I was recently going through some of my 35mm slides and came across one that had some mine equipment in it. I could not recall where it had been taken, so I asked my friend Mike if it rang any bells with him. He couldn't place it either. When I enlarged the slide, I could see a distinctive type of tub grinder in the background. I remembered that the first one of that type I had seen on a camping trip with my wife and kids. I had no memory of where specifically we had seen the grinder only that we were somewhere north of Duncan, AZ--This had been in the late 70's or early 80's, so it was not yesterday. I did remember that I had taken Mike to see the equipment right after we had returned from that trip. When I mentioned it to Mike, he said that he remembered exactly where that had been. So we decided to take a look and see what remained. Well, when we got into the area that Mike remembered, things were not so clear! As we sat by the side of the road wondering where to check next--a local rancher pulled up and told us about a nearby 4wd road that we could drive and that there was an old mine alongside it. So for something to do more than anything else, we backtracked and took off up the road. Nothing looked familiar to us. Just as we pretty much had decided that we had never been there before, some equipment came into view and lo and behold it was our missing equipment--together with other stuff that I certainly did not remember! What good luck! The question now became, what was my wife and I and the kids doing up on that road in the first place those many years ago? There does not appear to be a lot of information available on this mine. There are two minerals listed--gold and malachite(copper).

(Click on photos to enlarge)

After looking over the mine, we decided to return toward Duncan by a different route. So we headed east past a Hindu monastery and then south past several old mine operations. We passed a couple of old headframes and a ore chute but nothing else in the way of interesting equipment. We then passed the new Summit Mine operation which has re-opened a former mine and is scheduled to start shipping ore to a mill in Lordsburg soon. We then came to the mine site seen in the following photos. The equipment shows up in Google Earth, so it has been there awhile, but there was no one around when we were there. We do not know if it is in pre-production or post production phase.