Secretary's Page
From Jim Piper, DREGS' Secretary
Mining Stories: At the Sunnyside Mine, Silverton, Colorado
by Jim A. Paschis
In a 1969 mining overview course I made a friendship with a fellow physics teacher and we both gave up that science profession and `defected' to economic geology. The next summer I had just finished a week of mapping underground in the Camp Bird Mine completing field camp through Colorado School of Mines. It had another San Juan highlight, taking the first of many, rides on the 36"- gauge, Durango and Rio Grande Western Railroad to Silverton.
My friend had landed a job with Standard Metals at the Sunnyside Mine. Right after field camp he invited me to accompany him for his half-day Saturday of geologic mapping underground in the D - level of the mine. This day was for maintenance and mapping, not development or production. Access was by battery locomotive and crew car. The head count was made of three in the crew car with supplies heading up. We rode 2 dark miles into the American tunnel reaching the hoist at the Washington shaft. The hoistman then caged us up the next 970 feet to the F - level. We walked over to the 2500-raise and met the operator of the air tugger. There, one at a time, we got in the steel `coffin' box, used as a timber and supply skip, to be hoisted up about another 100 feet to the D - level. With the sporadic pneumatic pulses on the tugger cable, my friend went up first lifted in the man-sized skip. The accompanying miner followed me.
On the D - level, a new exposure of a one-half inch wide, white quartz vein with finely disperse, barely visible, gold had been made. The steep main vein mined was about 20 feet wide bearing pyrite, galena, and sphalerite with rhodonite in flanking altered volcanic rocks. I was told that the assay across the vein for combined lead, copper, zinc, gold, and silver was $1,150 per ton (in 1970 prices). There was also a two-inch wide hubnerite vein crossing out into the south rib. The miner made plumbing preparations bringing extra water line and hose. Then I knew one of the reasons I was invited: I had the `honor' of washing the ribs and back from Friday's blasts while my friend did the mapping. There certainly was a nice mix of ores which made his geologic map interesting.
Near the end of the work, my friend mapped the new quartz veinlet and pointed at the location that carried the fine visible gold. It was difficult to see so he pried on the vein and gave me ore to take out and check in daylight. I was thankful and said I would describe the minerals that I observed and let him know. After he gave me the two hand samples it was time to head back down. Mapping was done for the day. It was a great experience to see the operation and later write: Sunnyside Mine and list the metals they produced on my hard hat.
The call was made for the tugger for us to descend back down to the F - level. The miner then summoned the hoist and the three of us were back down and departed the cage. Those two hoist operators also joined us at the tram for the ride out to daylight. We rode past the underground office windows and the head count by the watchman was six, all accounted, and the portal could be secured.
Photo 1
That fall, I examined the D-level sulfide ores (Photo 1) and made a couple of cuts for two polished sections for the ore microscopy class at CSM. It was a learning situation seeing fine gold grains in quartz and the common sulfides. But one of the gray minerals seen was elusive to optical identification and needed X-rayed. It was found to be the silver species: polybasite. The polished sections were photographed at interesting areas including the polybasite which was next to gold (Photo 2), under crossed polars. I submitted the class report and sent a copy over to my geologist friend, keeping my promise about ore the samples.
Photo 2
Under the ore microscope I had examined a specific area containing gray galena - only, with its diagnostic cubic cleavage within quartz. Many years later I went back to that polished section and found it was thoroughly tarnished. I sent it out to Hal Miller for re-buffing. He removed the tarnish quite well and apparently also a very thin layer <.1Êm of the soft galena I previously had examined. But to my surprise, in crystallographic continuity with the galena (Photo 3) gold was now exposed!
In 1976 I had joined the Schwartzwalder Mine staff in Golden. There, Rick Carlson shared the news: that on Sunday, June 4, 1978, Lake Emma, once over the top of the cavernous Sunnyside Mine, had seeped then eroded through lake-bottom sediments, washed into the stopes, and completely emptied down the shafts. The draining lake waters had also carried the adjacent surface, original mill tailings from the early 1900's and came cascading with all in its path 1,700 feet down and then out the mine portals and into Cement Creek. From the shores of what once was Lake Emma, the scoured deep bottom hole and stope timbers of the Sunnyside Mine were exposed to daylight and captured in a 1979 photograph (Photo 4) by P. Carrara of the United States Geological Survey.
In western Pennsylvania attending the 1990 high school reunion, sitting to the left of a former classmate, we discussed our past common threads that lead us west to the San Juan Mountains. Ironically, he was the on-site insurance adjustor that reviewed the Sunnyside Mine disaster which fortunately took no miners that day.
For more information about the mining district the book now in its third printing: Mining the Hard Rock by John Marshall with Zeke Zanoni, 1996, is a great historical and pictorial documentation of the Silverton, Colorado area.
DREGS 2009 Fall Field Trip Summary:
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