ELFRIDA — The tell-tale blue lay scattered around the high desert landscape.
“Though it looks like turquoise, it isn’t. It’s better. It’s copper,” said Dave Johnson, chairman of the board of Aurelio Resource Corp.
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A deserted ore processor is one of many reminders of mining that was once done in Courtland. The Aurelio Resource Corp. of Lakewood, Colo., is now researching the feasibility of re-mining the area. (Ed Honda•Herald/Review)
(Use arrows above to view more photos) Stephen Doppler, Aurelio president and chief executive officer, reached down to pick up a chunk of rock and knocked it in two. Inside was the same blue color with a black streak which, he pointed out, is pure copper. The rock strata contains not only copper, but zinc and minor amounts of lead, gold and silver.
The area is known as Turquoise Mining District and it lies a few miles north of Elfrida back in the rolling hills on the trailing southern edge of the Dragoon Mountains.
“This was a prolific mining area from the late 1880s through the 1930s and again in the 1960s and 1970s. We have found some of the foundations of the old homesteads. It’s hard to imagine that nearly 1,000 people lived back up here and that a rail line connected it to the outside,” Johnson explained.
Off and on over the years, numerable mining companies have invested in the area and drilled some 197,000 feet in the 274 holes.
Fred Warnaars, secretary to the board of directors, is a spry and smiling 78-year-old geologist who did much of the early research on the site. Johnson and Doppler credit him with making the first decisive finds on the property.
Aurelio has been investigating the mineral content to determine if it’s economically feasible to mine the various ores since it first stared acquiring property in 2006.
By a stroke of luck, a huge stash of drill cores were found on a ranch near Tombstone. Boxes and boxes of the cores lie on pallets at the field office on Courtland Road. The cores were drilled around 45 years ago, said Johnson.
“At the time, the technology to mine lower grade copper wasn’t around. So, we’re going back and checking over the samples from the cores and we’re finding it’s running in the 1- to 2-percent range and sometimes more. That’s good enough to mine with a leaching process.”
In a small workshop, Ralph Smith, a local employee of Aurelio, was sawing the cores to open them up for assaying. It’s a dirty noisy job, and he wears ear protection to ensure he doesn’t lose his hearing. The core samples are then sent on to an Arizona laboratory for determination of the ore’s quality.
The cores were drilled from 500 feet to 1,000 feet at 247 points on the 5,300 acres the company now controls or owns out-right. Through an assemblage of data, the engineers and geologists went through a laborious process to tabulate the data. They also were able to locate each one of the old drill holes and match up the drill hole to the core sample, Johnson added.
Diane Dudley, investor relations, said, “This has been like putting pieces of a puzzle together when you don’t know what it looks like.”
Aurelio itself has drilled another 23,000 feet combined for 44 holes. That’s to determine the depth of the ore, added Johnson. All this information is needed to map the extent of the ore-bearing rock — how deep it goes vertically and horizontally.
What they are finding could lead to a mining boom in the historic area. With a possible 2 million pounds of copper and an untold amount of zinc to capture from the rock, the little town of Elfrida may see a boost to its economy. Copper is currently worth around $4 a pound and zinc around $1.80.
Aurelio became interested in the venture when geologists began finding historic records of the drill holes and core content back in 2006 and quickly acquired 13 mining claims.
“Some of the ore lies close to the surface,” Johnson said. “What we’ve found in the mining district is farther underground.”
The company plans to use the open-pit mining technique, which could produce a mini-Lavender Pit with a 400- to 500-foot depth.
Local concerns
Johnson and Doppler say they are committed to perform the mining operations with the environment in mind. They say they will try to stick with the natural flow of the hills and ridges for waste rock disposal. The leaching process will take water conservation into account and will be recycled within the system at least seven times. The fluid also will include one of the low-acid solutions or biologicals that will process the ore through chemical breakdown and precipitate copper or zinc in the slow drip method. There was also talk of adding a canopy over the leach field to conserve even more water.
Area history also is at the top of the list, said Dudley. “We want to preserve the historical aspects of the old townsite. There’s a very old cemetery up there that we want to get on the county’s historical list. We want to help this become a tourist destination.”
Whatever gets built on the property will remain hidden from public view so as not to disturb the picturesque viewshed. Buildings will be painted to match the desert surroundings so they blend in.
Johnson has also spent a lot of time getting to know the nearest neighbors.
“You want to make sure you deal with the concerns of the neighbors to the best of your ability. We want to address their concerns. But, there are limits. We’ll remain as flexible as we can,” added Johnson. “But, so far, many residents in the area have been very supportive of the possibility of the mine.”
The company has a long way to go, possibly several years, before the mining commences.
The scope of the mining operation and the procedure has to be determined. Then there’s the study of air quality, all the flora, fauna and environmental issues as well as historical and archeological issues.
“We have to have a baseline for all that before we can begin the permitting process,” said Johnson. “That process will take a number of years. We won’t actively begin mining until around 2013.”
That’s only if the studies and assays pan out and if they can interest enough investors in the project. The company has already spent $900,000 and plans to lay out around $5 million over the next 12 months.
It’s an aspect of the endeavor that remains challenging in the current economic crisis. Millions of dollars must be raised, and so Aurelio has been actively seeking investors to finance the coming drilling and construction.
Johnson said, “Raising money is not easy. This is a risky business.”
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