Aggregates Manager

October 2014

Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine

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AGGREGATES MANAGER October 2014 36 by Bill Langer Bill Langer is a consulting research geologist who spent 41 years with the U.S. Geological Survey before starting his own business. He can be reached at Bill_Langer@hotmail.com L eaving Winslow, Ariz., we follow the same path described by Steinbeck, past Flagstaff and Williams (the Gateway to the Grand Canyon), and on to Seligman. Route 66 has roughly paralleled I-40 since Oklahoma, and, finally, it veers north away from the interstate. We will travel all the way to the California border on the longest unbroken original stretch of the Mother Road. Manifest Destiny was the belief held in the late 1800s that Americans were destined to settle across the continent. The federal government provided a powerful incentive to fulfill that destiny through the passage of the 1872 Min- ing Law. The law allowed miners to make claims on federal land for just a few dollars and to extract ore with no royalties paid to the U.S. Treasury. After passage of the mining law, small mining towns popped up throughout the West. The biggest mining town in this part of Arizona was Oatman. During 1863, gold was discovered at Camp Mohave near the Colorado River. Ultimately, Mohave County would become the second-highest gold-producing county in Arizona. Initially, mining occurred at a slow pace due to an uprising among the Hualapai Indians in 1866 and the discovery of gold 25 miles to the north- east in the 1880s. Around the turn of the century, several highly productive mines were opened, and, during 1909, the town of Oatman was established to service the prospering local mines. Oatman was named in the honor of Olive Oatman, a young girl who was taken captive by a Native American tribe, traded to Mohave people who ad- opted her as a daughter, and later returned to the white world. During World War I, Oatman was the largest gold producing camp in the United States, but as mine depths reached deeper than 1,000 feet, the gold and silver content of some of the ores decreased. In 1924, a number of major ore bodies became exhausted. By then, the mining district had produced more than $34 million worth of gold, or more than $2 billion at today's gold market value. The final blow to the district occurred during World War II, when the government issued Limitation Order No. 208, closing gold mines. The purpose was to focus the country's mining on copper, zinc, and other strategic metals necessary for the war ef- fort. But there's still gold in them thar hills around Oatman, and, since WWII, there have been sporadic attempts to mine the precious metal. Oatman was able to cater to Route 66 travelers until 1953 when a new route between Kingman and Needles was built. But Oatman, like its namesake, survived. Today, the burgeoning worldwide interest in Historic Route 66 brings tourists from near and far, many to see the wild burros that roam the streets; descendants of the original miners' burros which were set free when the mining stopped. Continuing west out of Oatman, we drive over Sitgreaves Pass and down to the Colorado River; the border between Arizona and California. Looking back at the mountains from whence we just came, we can almost hear Tom Joad (from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath) say, "Never seen such tough mountains… This here's the bones of a country." AM Passage of the 1872 Mining Law spurred the development of mining towns as the nation explored its Manifest Destiny. THE BONES OF A Country And then the tall trees began, and the cars spouted steam and labored up the slopes. And there was Flagstaff, and that was the top of it all. Down from Flagstaff over the great pla- teaus… The sun drained the dry rocky country, and ahead were jagged broken peaks, the western wall of Arizona. Grapes of Wrath, 1939, John Steinbeck, Chapter 18.

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