A nice mineral collecting day trip from the Reno area is to the Nightingale Mining District, an area with many mines and interesting geology, flora and fauna. The area produced mostly tungsten with some by-products but has not been significantly active since the demand for the metal declined after the Korean War. There are a number of major mines with associated ruins as well as hundreds of smaller prospects. As with all such areas, approach any mining area with caution. Do not enter mine openings and remember that not all shafts and pits are fenced.

We approached Nightingale from the southwest from the south end of Pyramid Lake and the town of Nixon. Pyramid Lake is one of the largest and deepest desert lakes in the Great Basin; is is one of the remnants of the huge Lake Lahontan that covered thousands of square miles in northwestern Nevada several thousand years ago. From Nixon a gravel road trends north and east crossing a divide to the basin of Winnemucca (dry) Lake. This lake bed is long and narrow and parallels the Nightingale Mountains on the west. Our goal was the MGL mine, some 7 miles north of the main access road and a mile or two up into the mountains.

The road north passes some spectacular volcanic geology and excellent examples of ancient shorelines with associated tufa mounds. in several areas old beach deposits consist of hard, cemented gravels made up of black eroded igneous rocks that flank the basin in the area.

At the lower end of the canyon where the MGL Mine is located is the cement foundation of the processing plant where tungsten ores were concentrated. The ores were crushed and the heavier minerals containing tungsten were separated and concentrated during several stages of processing as they traveled down through the mill. Concentrates were hauled by truck to a railroad for transport to refining plants outside the area.

The road up the canyon required a bit of careful driving and would not be passable in wet weather. The ore chute or dump is located below the main mining operations. Open cuts in the tungsten bearing rocks can be seen above it. There are several adits (horizontal tunnels) that access the ore zones and allow the ores to be moved down and out to be loaded on trucks for the trip down-canyon to the mill.

The dumps around the ore chute and along the access roads contain many of the minerals that can be found in the open pits and tunnels. The MGL Mine is known for particularly fine specimens of large, brown andradite garnets as well as clinozoisite. Some of the best examples can be etched from calcite that fills some veins and pockets, protecting the crystals. Other minerals include pyrite, quartz, tremolite, copper secondary minerals and rare molybdenite.

Although the area is dry this time of year there are a variety of flowers and lots of lizards. Desert plume, Stanleya pinnata, is one of the more spectacular. Lizards like the black-collared, the western whiptail and the sagebrush lizard abound. It must have been a productive spring for them, because there were little lizards everywhere. It is amusing to see a 3-inch lizard on a 6-inch rock, protecting his territory with all of his bravado. The bigger lizards get to protect bigger rocks, and even graduate to a boulder if they are really assertive. And they run like the wind! Even the littlest ones will raise a small plume of dust as they dash down the road.

Returning to the main access road we again went northeast over a pass of about 6,000 feet in elevation to the site of the Nightingale Mines. Here are cement foundations and a metal stack and a large water tank that provided water for the milling operation. Most of the metal structures have been riddled by bullet holes and there is considerable trash left by campers. I have never thought of a water tank as a challenging target, but it must be.

The mining here was concentrated in a steeply-dipping sedimentary unit some 15 to 20 feet thick that has been metamorphosed by nearby and included granitic intrusives. The mining covers some half-mile of strike and has left large, open cuts and overhangs. Dumps contain a similar assortment of minerals as seen at the MGL Mine, but the rock is ‘tighter’ with less opportunity for good specimens where we checked.

Returning over Nightingale Pass we stopped at some smaller workings known as the Jay Bird Mine but found nothing of interest. The rest of the trip was uneventful. Pyramid Lake was calm and some the local white pelicans were having a meeting on the beach as we passed by. All in all a very good day.

The Leadville Mine northeast of Gerlach in Washoe County, Nevada, has produced a variety of metals from ores associated with porphyritic dikes in andesite. There is a mention in the literature that there were large fluorite crystals associated with the deposits, although there are no real details describing the occurance. It was worth a trip to see this area and some new country and to check out some geode areas on the north side of the Blackrock.

We left Reno early and had breakfast at Bruno’s in Gerlach, the iconic restaurant on the Black Rock-Smoke Creek junction. We traveled by paved and then gravel roads about 35 miles NE to the turn into the Leadville District. A good jeep trail leads to the mine site. It was a very windy and cold day with showers at the 6,000 plus foot elevation, but the flowers were out and a lone antelope and several groups of mustangs didn’t seem to mind the weather. We spent several hours climbing over mine dumps and looking at prospect pits on the main structure and to the southeast on several parallel dikes. The dumps produced several specimens of massive galena, one of sphalerite and numerous samples of sulfide-rich waste rock. There was no recognizable fluorite on the dumps or on the mineralized structure on a single exposure on the drainage south of the main workings.

We left Leadville and drove north to check an area where Sam Knipmeyer, my digging partner, had prospected with his dad in the 80’s. There is a nice display of petrified logs next to the road, protected from passing rock hammers by a sturdy fence. We returned to the north edge of the Black Rock Desert and turned NE again on Soldier Meadow road. We decided not to drive on the playa as it had showered much of the day and might have turned the track to mud. We passed an opal mine (formerly, Little Joe) and proceeded to the Mud Meadows Reservoir and turned south along the west flank of the Black Rock Range. This track follows the approximate route of the 49er’s as they treked to the Highrock Canyon and the Northwest. We passed the site of Hardin City, history unknown. Ruins consist of two eroded piles of cut ash fall tuff blocks that were buildings near a boggy spring.

Top, Hardin City Ruins – Bottom, Double Hot Springs

Some 5 miles to the south is Double Hot Springs, a series of pools with temperatures in the dangerous range. It was to late for a bath, so we turned back north a mile or so to a flat dry camping spot. It was windy and rainy all night but the area was surprisingly dry in the morning.

After breakfast and packing up camp, we re-traced our route to the north and found a track into the hills to the east. The area is reported to have a variety of chalcedony geodes weathering from basalt. We did find a number of specimens, nothing spectacular, and a lot of chips from sites along the flanks of the valley. Some were of a very pretty red jasper and had clearly been shaped as scrapers. The highlight, actually, was at the end of a small box canyon in one of the basalt layers where we found a nesting pair of prairie falcons. They were very upset with our visit but calmed down quickly as we left.

Seeing rain to the south and fearing a muddy track on the playa, we again headed south to Double Hot Springs. We took pictures and reflected on the marker with a quote from a log dated August, 1849, in which the writer remarked on the springs and the fact that they had rested and “boiled beans” (in the springs) as they passed, on the way up the trail. We then headed SW to the track across the Black Rock where for 35-40 miles one can drive in nearly a straight line at 50-60 miles per hour. The dust plume was spectacular!

In the mid-1970’s I spent some time working in SW Colorado in the La Plata Mountains near Durango. This area has produced significant gold (the Bessie G mine, for example, was active at that time) and has been investigated for its porphyry copper potential and uranium as well.

The Tomahawk Mine and basin are located above timberline in the western part of the complex. Rocks in the area include a variety of intrusives and metamorphosed sediments that form the high ridges and cliffs around the head of Tomahawk Creek. The Tomahawk mine produced gold in the last century. At the time I worked in the area there was still a very thin, rich vein containing visible gold accessible (if you were a skilled rock climber) on the cliff face at the creek near the mine ruins.

Above: Tomahawk Basin seen from high ridge to SE.

Below: Tomahawk Mine structures in 1975.

What passed for a road ended a few hundred yards west of the mine at a drill site located near a small intrusive complex. Talus from the high cliffs to the south of this intrusive contained scattered vugs that were mineralized with epidote, quartz, K-feldspar and rare fluorite. The fluorite crystals were simple octahedrons of a rich violet color. Their maximum size was about 2 mm.

I have always thought that it would be worthwhile to investigate the area for the source of the fluorite. Perhaps there are larger cavities and better crystals in the larger talus or lower cliff faces a few hundred feet up and to the south of the intrusive. Are there any of you energetic young collectors interested?

In the spring of 1988 we spent a month in Brazil. We were looking for the usual mineral and gemstone specimens, and wanted to stock up on quartz and things like spheres for the ‘crystal craze’ that was in high form then. Our primary purpose was more long-range, however. The previous year a friend of ours who lived in Sao Paulo had visited the states and had brought with him several faceted tourmalines from the Paraiba occurance. These were of the best tourquoise color and attracted a lot of attention as the area was little known at the time. He wanted a geological evaluation of the mines so we agreed to follow up and do a field check of the producing area. We all wanted to see if there was any possibility of acquiring either a source or ownership.
Arrangements were made to meet with one of the developers of the property. We traveled to Paraiba state to meet him, flying into Recife on the coast and then to Campina Grande where we met Hector. Hector was a well-to-do man by local standards, a road repair contractor, who had sold most of his business equipment in order to pursue mining the tourmalines at Paraiba. We met him at a hotel in a small town where we looked at bags of stones, mostly small fragments of crystals with mixed quality and color and with none of specimen quality. In the morning Hector took us further into the ‘wilds’ stopping to show us a home he was building for his family. It was very basic by our standards, cement floors and walls, one water source and a bathroom separated from the house. We drove in a small jeep some 25-30 Km, over dirt tracks that would have been impassable in wet weather. At one point he leaned on the horn in the middle of nowhere and we all wondered why. As we crested a small hill, there was a gate across the road and a small boy was pushing it open. Our driver slowed, but never stopped, and handed the boy a bill, maybe 50 cents, that would make his week.

We arrived at the mines and the small village of Sao Jose da Batalha. It was a typical one street village, with mostly stone or cement homes with red tile roofs and large window openings with no glass or screens. Goats and pigs and a variety of dogs made themselves at home just about everywhere, including inside some of the homes.

The mines all followed a very clear structure that crossed a hill, probably covering 40-50 acres. From the crest of the hill the structure could be seen in the distance revealed by the white waste rock around pits and trenches in the associated pegmatite. According to Hector, there were more locations for gemstones on the structure, but none had the color of those at the site we were evaluating. On the hill there were large trenches and open cuts, some clearly quite old. These showed areas with wonderfully colored, zoned pink and tourquoise tourmalines in matrix. Fine specimens but not the gem crystals we were looking for. As I recall, there were some very active wasps in the area as well. To compliment the wasps there were some attractive but toxic caterpillars on the bushes. Teri approached one of them and was warned the she would have ‘24 hours of pain’ if she touched it.

There were two active workings on the hill at that time. One, a vertical shaft, was producing very little. The miners offered me a tour but after looking over the way they maneuvered down the shaft (20 meters deep) with only an old-looking rope attached to a flimsy tripod of sticks and what might have passed for steps in the walls, I declined. Twenty years ago I was much more agile and a lot lighter but still no match for those guys.

The second workings were more productive and had been open-cut but, following a rock slide, were contained in an adit designed to intercept the pegmatite under the previous surface openings. There was one miner working with very basic hand tools and progressing a few feet a week. Hector wanted enough money to get some drilling equipment and a diesel powered compressor to speed things up. Everyone agreed that the rare crystals of gem quality were “limpia, limpia” and as big as our fingers. Following the tour we retired to Hector’s town home where his mistress (he was a two family man) had prepared rice, beans and some sort of meat. We talked about the problems of obtaining mining rights as ‘outsiders’ and it really came down to trusting a local, Hector in this case, with a lot of money. It is a bit more complicated than that, but it became clear that inspite of the obvious potential, we would have a difficult time gaining a realistic controlling position there. Over the next few years many fine crystals and gem stones were produced from these mines. We never did find out if Hector was able to continue with his operations or if he was part of this success.
We returned to Campina Grande for the evening. After a nice meal and a stroll around the downtown shopping area, occasionally passing open-air coffin vendors with products displayed leaning against the store fronts, and returned to the hotel. We left for Recife and points south in the morning.

Steve Rose