Preliminary evaluation of mineral resources of the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage area

/ 26 March 2019 / 0 Comments

In March 2019, President Donald Trump signed a public lands bill creating the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage area encompassing parts of Santa Cruz and Pima Counties. This followed more than a decade of effort on the part of U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva and others working towards cultural preservation, economic development, and geotourism in the area (Nogales International, 18 Mar. 2019).

The Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area covers a broad swath of historic and productive porphyry copper mining in southern Arizona. Our newest Open-File Report, Preliminary evaluation of mineral resources of the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area, Arizona, provides a brief assessment of the mineral resources of the roughly 3,600 square miles (9,378 square kilometers; 2,304,000 acres) of the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area.

Mineral assessment is largely confined to metallic minerals - copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc and molybdenum extracted from 20 metallic mineral districts. Hundreds of mines were worked in these mineral districts. Aggregate resources, the building blocks of human society, are also an important component of the mineral resources of the Santa Cruz Valley area.

The report includes six figures, and citations and active links for more than 50 AZGS and US Geological Survey published maps and reports.

Citation: Pearthree, P.A. and Conway, F.M., 2019, Preliminary evaluation of mineral resources of the proposed Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area, Arizona. Arizona Geological Survey Open-File Report OFR-18-03, 7 p. (http://repository.azgs.az.gov/uri_gin/azgs/dlio/1911)

Posted 27 Mar 2019 (M. Conway)