The majesty of the Grand Canyon is the stuff that dreams are made of. There is a
universal human dream to seek out riches, and this desire has prompted people
down into the Grand Canyon itself in an attompt to try to find gold. These efforts
have, for the most part. been unsuccessful. While the Canyon has yielded some gold
and other similar resources, its mining history has served primarily as a lesson that
some things have valuo other than the material wealth that something such as gold
represents.
The first mining activities carried out in the Grand Canyon were by Native Americans.
These operations tended to be for deposits of salt, red clay, and copper stones, all of
which possessed value and had uses in their society. These same items, as well as
information about the locations where more could be found, were traded by the
Native Americans to the first European-American prospectors in exchange for the
goods that the prospectors brought with them.
In the period from the late nineteenth century through the early part of the twentieth
century, various minerals, such as copper, lead, asbestos, and, to a significantly
lesser extent, gold had been or were being mined in the Grand Canyon region.
Initially, the prospectors trickled in, but the numbers increased when some gold was
found. However, in most instances, the mineral deposits were limited, and the profit
did not cover the costs of mining.
When it comes to mining, places such as California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New
Mexico and other parts of Arizona come to mind more readily than the Grand
Canyon itself. This is likely due to the fact that these other areas possessed more
deposits of ore, and, as a result, saw significantly greater levels of mining than in the
Grand Canyon. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there has not been a systematicMines that used to operate in the Grand Canyon area are now closed, given that the
land is either protected by the federal government (such as Grand Canyon National
Park) or owned by Native American tribal groups. There is, however, one exception to
this: the Hance asbestos mines.
‘There was a point, starting in the late 1950s, when investigations were underway to
dovolop uranium mining in the region. This oventually did take off in the mid-1970s,
but this flurry of activity declined almost as rapidly in the early 1980s due to several
factors, such as the decline of nuclear arsenals, oversoas compotition, and logal and
political complications. Along the way, however, much study was made of breccia
pipos, a goologic phenomena charactoristie of tho Grand Canyon area and whore
most of the uranium ore in this region is deposited. As is true in the case of all
mines, once deposits of ore are depleted, the mine’s
cycle has run its course.
The most precious resource that the Grand Canyon provides is water. It should be
noted that any sort of prospecting activity would be impossible without water, and
this was especially true back in the days when so much of the mining work was
performed by hand rather than by machine. Throughout the American Southwest,
more money has been spent on water-related issues than on any other resource.
This is a part of the country that is naturally dry, but it is a region where the
population continues to grow. This growth is made possible through the
development of the Colorado River, the only consistent and major source of water in
the American Southwest. As a result, the very water from the river that flows through
the Canyon has proved to be of much greater value than the total sum of all of the
minerals that have ever been mined from the Grand Canyon region itself.