ARIZONA LODE GOLD MINES AND GOLD MINING By Eldred D. Wilson, J. B. Cunningham, and G. M. Butler Revised in 1967
DAVIS-DUNKIRK MINE
The Davis-Dunkirk mines, held by Davis-Dunkirk Mines,Inc., is on the western slope of the Bradshaw Mountains, near the head of Slate Creek. By road, the main camp, at the mill, is 14 miles from Prescott and 3 miles west of the Senator Highway. As the elevation at the camp is about 6,400 feet and on part of the road over 7,000 feet, communications in winter are sometimes hampered by snow.
These veins were located in the sixties or early seventies of the past century. Raymond, in 1874, stated that: "Seven and a half tons of ore from the Davis mine near Prescott have been shipped to San Francisco and yielded $618.75 or $88.50 per ton. This vein is only opened by a few holes from 5 to 10 feet deep. "47 Little other historical data for the mine are available, but its production prior to 1922 48 is said to have been about $200,000. In 1925, the property was obtained by Davis-Dunkirk Mines,Inc., which subsequently built a new camp and a 120-ton flotation mill. Regular operations, employing about twenty men, began in August, 1933, and yielded fifteen cars of concentrates up to January 10, 1934.
Here, the steep-sided canyon of Slate Creek exposes moderate lyfissilepre-Cambrianschist, intruded by stocks and dikes of gran-odiorite and diorite and a few dikes of rhyolite-porphyry. The mine workings are mainly in schist which, a short distance farther west, is intruded by a large stock of granodiorite and, on the southeast, by diorite.
The Dunkirk vein occurs within a fault fissure that strikes northeastward and dips nearly vertically southeastward. As seen on the lowest adit level, its thickness ranges from a few inches to about 3 feet. The filling is mainly coarse-grained grayish white quartz with abundant pyrite and chalcopyrite. In places, coarsely crystalline pale-pinkish ankerite is the principal gangue. Rather intense sericitization and silicification are apparent in the wall rock. The richer gold and silver ore shoots, as indicated by several old stopes above this adit, tend to be somewhat irregular in form and distribution. The silver content is asserted to be decreasing with depth. At a point approximately 1,400 feet in from the portal, the vein separates into two branches about 45° apart. In January, 1934, ore was being mined from workings at the bottom of a 100-foot winze sunk at this point. According to H.L. Williams, 49 manager of the property, the mill concentrates from this ore averaged about one ounce in gold and 62 ounces in silver per ton.
The left branch of the vein continues northeastward, towards the old Davis mine. Ore from the upper levels of this mine was described by Lindgren 50 as consisting of fine-grained, druzy quartz with sparse pyrite and yellow sphalerite, with abundant grains of proustite and polybasite. He regarded this vein as of the shallow-seated type, but the Dunkirk vein belongs distinctly to the meso thermal type.
Workings on the Davis-Dunkirk property consist of more than 6,000 feet of adits, raises, stopes, and winzes, distributed over about four claim-lengths and with a vertical range of 1,600 feet.
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