Rosedale mine 2

The new Rosedale mine and mill began operations in 1913, rebuilt following the 1910 fire. With a new 20-stamp mill now in operation, production was soon allowed to increase back to revenue levels from before the mill fire. This persisted over the next three years until . . .

1916 DISASTER

The mill was processing about 450 tons of high grade ore per month when another fire struck in 1916. The fire destroyed the mill, cyanide plant, and spread into the mine to burn some of the wood shoring and the main shaft timbers down into the mine. This 3rd fire, with another period of mine inactivity, marked the decline of the Rosedale mine.

According to the oral history of Edwin Burris, recorded by the Socorro County Historical Society in 1973, "the mine is about 735 feet deep and there's lots of drifts and things down there. My father used to work in them mines ... and I guess them mines has just petered out, I don't know. "

The Rosedale mine did not just "peter out." It was irreparably damaged by both water and fire. The main shaft of the Rosedale mine was indeed 735 feet deep where they hit water and could work the vein no deeper. After the 1916 fire, much of the mine was filled with carbon dioxide and other deadly gasses making the air unbreathable. Since CO2 is heavier than air, it settled to the lower reaches of the mine, where the deadly gasses remain suspended in the mine to this day. The fire in the shaft and drifts also compromised the structural integrity of the mine, causing unstable collapses in several areas.

After the fire, the owners appealed to mining and engineering companies to propose plans to return the mine to operation. Several concerns inspected the damaged mine and all agreed the mine, flooded near the unworked vein, collapsed portions of the shaft, and filled with deadly gasses, left the Rosedale mine mortally wounded. The only option was to build a new 700-foot deep shaft to access the vein and a new mill to process the ore – a financially prohibitive option.

1930s Great Depression. There was a slight surge in mining activity in the west and southwest during the Great Depression as men were willing to work for lower wages and the cheap (sometimes free) availability of housing in the mining camps in which to live. Rosedale was no different. On April 19, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended the Gold Standards Act which raised the government-set price of gold from $20.67 per ounce to $35.00 per ounce. This bolstered mining a bit and allowed the Rosedale mine to continue operations on a limited basis.

1934 – New Owners. After the Rosedale mine sat dormant for nearly ten years, it was purchased by the Black Bear Mining Co. and operated under the name Rosedale Mining & Milling Co. The new owners soon faced the problems of the previous operators – a collapse in the main shaft prevented access to the vein, still flooded at 735 feet, and the dangerous gasses from the 1916 fire had not dissipated to safe levels, all preventing underground work. They built a small mill with a rock crusher and 65-ton per day cyanide plant to

process what was left of the reserve ores from

previous mining operations, and to reprocess

some of the tailings with some success.

In 1935, the operation was again reorganized

under the name Rosedale Gold Mines Inc.,

Ltd. 58 tons of concentrate was shipped that

year to the ASARCO smelter in El Paso which

returned 158 ounces of gold and 147 ounces

of silver for a value of $5,641. The following

year, they expanded the cyanide plant to

process 135 tons per day which yielded 1,631

ounces of gold and 2,682 ounces of silver for a

value of $59,174.

1937 Closure. The Rosedale mine operated for 233 days in 1937

averaging about 116 tons of ore concentrate per month shipped to the smelter. This produced 1,665 ounces of gold and 2,291 ounces of silver for a value of $60,062 (about $1 million today) by the end of the year. It is not known what the profit on operations were. On December 2, with virtually all the available ore and cyanide slurry exhausted, the company closed its doors. The last of the miners and their families left, leaving the mine and the town totally abandoned, but the cyanide mill still in place. Ownership reverted to the Premier Trust Co., likely through default or forfeiture.

Ore from the mine is delivered to the mill in ore cars and emptied into the ore shoot at the head of the mill. This raw ore is the size of bricks to basketballs, or larger. The ore in the inclined ore shoot moves by gravity, and assisted by workers, into the rock crushers, which reduces the gold laden ore to gravel sized pieces. This smaller ore is next fed to the stamp mills which crushes the gravel sized ore to about the size of sand, and mixed with water to form a slurry. This is sent to shaker and flotation tables that allows the heavier gold to sink to the bottom for collection and all other materials and the water mix to be discarded. In later years of the mine, a cyanide plant was added to the mill. The cyanide solution was used for separating the gold from the slurry by placing the slurry into tanks, with agitation, to allow the heavier gold to settle to the bottom for collection. This increased recovery of the gold metal for higher profits. Allowed to dry in the settling ponds, this gold rich slurry is the concentrate sent to the smelters in El Paso to be melted down for forming the gold bullion, which was then purchased by the U.S. Treasury or other commercial enterprise (jewelry, industrial uses, etc.).

1940's – WWII Era saw another surge in mining, mostly to support the war effort. This included some of the mines in Kelly and around Socorro supplying lead and manganese, but not Rosedale. During the war, the demand was for war metals, not precious metals, which kept the price of gold around $36-37 per ounce throughout the war.

In 1941, Nora Carrara of Magdalena, NM bought the deed to the Rosedale mine from the Premier Trust Co. for just $500. Using the abandoned cyanide plant, the brief operation only yielded 35 ounces of gold and 128 ounces of silver for a $1,316 return. This is the last known attempt to extract gold from the Rosedale mine. In 1942, an auction was held which sold the remaining machinery and items of value, leaving the mine and cyanide mill building vacant. A few houses in Rosedale were moved to Magdalena for housing; the majority of structures were simply dismantled for the wood and furnishings. By the 1950s, virtually nothing of the town of Rosedale or the mine remained. Today, only the concrete ruins of the stamp mill and boiler pedestals remain along with a few pieces of rusted machinery.

In 1917, Jonathan Worrell purchased the remaining interest in the operation from the W.H. Martin Co. for $42,664, operating under the name Rosedale Mines Corp. Worrell's plan was to use the reserve ore – ore removed from the mine before the fire. Additionally, mining continued in the stopes on the upper levels with a reduced work force where small pockets of gold ore, some missed previously, were worked. A few men operated the cyanide plant recovering traces of gold from the tailings. Without the mill machinery, crushing the ore and attempting to recover the gold was all accomplished with manual labor. Production continued, though limited compared to the glory days. It was a slow, tedious process, but profitable gold was being returned from the smelter. The mine operated in the manner, though often sporadically, for the next several years.

By the 1920s, only a skeleton crew remained working the Rosedale mine. Production was also declining from the New Golden Bell mine south of Rosedale. The other area mines and prospects, such as the Whitecap and Baking Powder claims, had long been abandoned. This was typical throughout the west as dropping demands and prices for mined metals following WWI left few mines in operation by the 1920s. Many of the mines in the Kelly Mining District had also closed.

Many of the furloughed miners and town's people began to leave Rosedale, looking for employment elsewhere. With the majority of local mines now closed, including at Kelly, many were forced to find non-mining jobs; others became area ranchers.

In 1921, 35,000 tons of ore were reported as mined by the struggling Rosedale mine and declined after that. The mine operated only sporadically until . . .

PRESENT DAY: RECENT ACTIVITY

The Rosedale Mining District has received some recent attention since the 1941 closure taking advantage of new technologies and processes to assess the potential for future mining activities. In short, "there's still gold in them there hills," possibly rich gold and silver ore, but the veins are deep, 300–500 feet deep or more, and perhaps near the water table. With no assurance of recovering profitable gold without an extensive mining operation, working the vein is considered prohibitive at this time.

1975-1976 The Perry, Knox, and Kaufman, Inc. (PKK) performed prospecting and mapping surveys of the Rosedale and Golden Bell mining areas. While results were inconclusive, surface samples and drill holes did find traces of gold and silver and identified a vein. However, future mining development was not warranted.

1990 – Charles Ferguson of the Sunshine Mining Co. conducted geochemical analysis of the mining district with the same conclusion as PKK that gold likely exists at depth requiring extensive workings to access.

2007 – The Cibola National Forest, Magdalena Ranger District, began the Rosedale Mine and Mill Cleanup Project to reclaim the heavy metal contamination from the cyanide settling ponds and tailings as part of the Abandoned Mine Lands program. This included an archaeological

inventory of the Rosedale mine of all historic and cultural remains as part of the cleanup conducted by Burney & Associates, Taos, NM.

2016 – State of NM awards a 1-year permit for the Holley-Rosedale Exploration Project, awarded to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Holley of Dove Creek, CO. Permit to drill six exploration drill holes 500 ft. deep. What exploration was performed and the results is not known.

New Mexico Tech University – New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (formerly New Mexico Bureau of Mines) also conducts periodic surveys and assessments of the Rosedale district for mining research, geologic studies, academic knowledge, and other reasons, and in conjunction with the Abandoned Mine Lands program.