Vulture Mine Area

Driving directions to Vulture Mine Area:

Address: Vulture Mine Road, Wickenburg, AZ 85390

From the intersection of US 60 (Wickenburg Way) and Vulture Mine Road in the town of Wickenburg, turn South onto Vulture Mine Road (near the Safeway Shopping Center) and travel 10 miles to the mine area on the North West (right) side of the Vulture Mine Road. The entrance is ½ mile after mile marker 15. A map can be found here.

From Highway 10 take the exit to N 339th Ave/Hassayampa Road. Follow N. 339th Ave/Hassayampa Road for 2 miles then turn left onto Indian School Road. Take Indian School Road for 3.7 miles then turn right onto N. 355th Ave. In 13 miles turn right onto Vulture Mine Road and then arrive at the claim area in approximately 10 miles.

Free Camping with in 4 miles: (CLICK HERE FOR THE LOCATION).

Gold Placers and Placering in Arizona – Bulletin #168, 1961 (CLICK HERE FOR THE BULLETIN)

Vulture Placers
The Vulture placers are in northwestern Maricopa County, in the vicinity of the Vulture mine, about 14 miles by road southwest of Wickenburg. North of that area the extensively dissected Vulture mountains rise to elevations of 3,500 or more feet above sea level or nearly 2,000 feet above the desert plain on the south.

According to A.P. Irvine who spent many years in this district, these placers were first worked about 1867. At times during the five or ten years following, as many as 200 or more men were placering with dry-washers in arroyos of the vicinity. Blocks of ground only 50 ft square were allowed each miner, but many men recovered from $25 to $50 per day each. By about 1880, the richest, readily obtainable fold had veen harvested, but some dry-washing, principally by transient miners, has been done every year after rains. Evidences of the early activity are still to be seen in numerous old pits, piles of screenings overgrown with small brush, and decaying dry-washer machines. In the northern portion of the area, some of the thin hillside gravels were scraped up and dry-washed.

The principal rocks of the Vulture area consist of pre-Cambrian schist, dikes, and irregular masses of granite, probable Mesozoic monsonitic dikes, and Tertiary andesitic and rhyolitic lava flows. Within this schist are the large, rich gold-bearing quartz vein of the Vulture mine and many smaller veins. Practically all of the smaller veins carry visible free gold, and drainage channels leading down from them contain placer gold.

The Vulture placer ground covers about 3 square miles in the pediment of Red Top Basin, northwest of the Vulture mine, and continues down Vulture Wash for about 2 miles southeast of the Vulture Mine. The placer gravels , which are composed mainly of medium to fine, angular pebbles of schist and quartz, are generally less than 10 ft thick and rest upon schist bedrock. Considerable caliche cement, which occurs in all but the thinnest gravels, has limited dry-washing operations to the narrow arroyos that re typical of this field.

Although some gold is distributed throughout the gravels, it is more abundant near bedrock. Several samples, taken from random localities at the time of the writer’s visit, revealed abundant colors when panned. Even the old dry-washer tailings show fine colors upon panning, as those machines could recover only the coarser gold. The gold is mostly coarse and angular. During the early days, according to Mr. Irvine, many $10 to $20 nuggets were found, and some worth $100 were reported.

Gold Mining and Milling in the Wickenburg Area (CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORT)

Tour the nearby Vulture Mine (CLICK HERE FOR THE WEBSITE)

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