Geology and Ore Deposits of Mohave County, Arizona

INTRODUCTION THE present sketch is submitted by request in the hope that it may serve as a basis for geologic discussion of the mining camps in Mohave County, which is experiencing a marked revival of activities. The region, commonly known as the Mohave district and Kingman district, lies in western Arizona in the southern part of Mohave County, bordering California and Nevada on the west (Fig. 1). Kingman, the principal-town; is situated near the center of the area. on. the Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fe Transcontinental Railway. This region is composed of naked desert ranges of mountains and broad detritus-filled valleys, the southern extension of the characteristic topography of the Great Basin. In altitude it varies from 500 ft. in the southwest to 8,300 ft. on Hualpai Peak southeast of Kingman. The mountains trend north-northwest. They rise about 3,000 ft. above the valleys, are generally rugged and were formed mainly by erosion. They are composed in the main of a, complex of pre-Cambrian granitoid rocks which underlies the area as a whole. Like the valleys, they average about 10 miles in width. Beginning on the east, they are the Grand Wash Cliffs, the Cerbat Range, the Black Mountains or River Range, and the Eldorado Range. The upper or dominantly cliff half of the Grand Wash Cliffs, marking the edge of the Colorado Plateau, is composed of nearly horizontal sedimentary Paleozoic strata of the Grand Canyon section, and the lower half of the underlying pre-Cambrian complex. The Cerbat Mountains situated in the central part of the area, and the Black Mountains situated between Detrital-Sacramento Valley on the east and Mohave Valley, the great trough of the Colorado River, on the west, are locally flanked or overlain by Tertiary volcanics (Fig. 2). The latter consist of five groups of mountains of which the most important is the Black Mesa group on the south. The Eldorado Range, rising from the great trough of the Colorado on the west and containing Searchlight, Eldorado Canyon, and other camps, is topographically and geologically similar to the Black Mountains.