Arizona Historic Mines?

Question

where can i find out about old mining companies in arizona from around early 1900? dont say yahoo either because i already tried it and i got nothing.

Answer 1

There are a number of good sources about mining and mining companies in Arizona, but most of them are not available online.

The book "Arizona Mines and Mining Companies" by James H. Garbani lists all the known mines and mining companies that were organized in Arizona or operated in Arizona. You can look up by name or by region, however it does not tell you any details - just the name and general region.

The Arizona state Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology has published a number of booklets that index all the mining properties in a given county (for instance there is a booklet on "Index of Mining Properties in Yuma County, Arizona"). For each entry, they give the location of the mine, the types and amounts of minerals extracted, which people or companies ran the mine and the years they operated it. They also give a short overview of the history of each district. This is an excellent resource. They don't have a booklet for each county, but they do cover the ones with the most mining activity.

The Department of Mines and Mineral Resources in the government district of downtown Phoenix keeps files on every major mining property in the state and often has very good historic records regarding production and inspections. However, most of the records are from after statehood (1912) and more extensive records generally don't start to appear until after WW2.

If you are interested in a specific company that was organized in Arizona than you can look up the company incorporation papers through the Arizona Corporation Commission in downtown Phoenix. Incorporation papers will tell you who founded the company and when, how much money was invested and where they planned to operate. Sometimes you will also get yearly stockholder reports. Note that many companies that owned mines in Arizona were actually founded and headquatered in other states.

The Arizona State Archives (state capital building in downtown Phoenix), the Arizona Historical Society main archives and library (near the U of A in Tucson), the Sharlot Hall Museum library (Prescott) and the special collections departments at the main libraries of NAU, ASU and U of A all contain collections and papers related to mining in Arizona - helps to have a specific area or mine in mind.

Lastly, check out the three volumes of the book "History of Mining in Arizona" that were published by the Mining Club of the Southwest Foundation. Each one has 10-12 chapters with each chapter giving very detailed history and information about a specific mine, mining company or district. If the area you are interested in is covered by one of the chapters than you will have all the details (and footnotes) that you could want.

Finally, because many of Arizona's ghost towns are old mining camps, the books "Ghost Towns of Arizona" by James Sherman and "Arizona Ghost Towns and Mining Camps" by Philip Varney often give good brief histories of the mines, miners and companies associated with a specific camp.

Answer 2

See here:
http://azmemory.lib.az.us/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/shmining&CISOSTART=1,81

Got through Yahoo :)