What Lies Beneath Our Feet

Yesterday, the four of us took a short drive up to Parker for some groceries.  There are a few grocery stores in Quartzsite but they are not anything you would want to go to for a large shop.  The prices are slightly higher and selection not as great.

Parker is a fairly small town and the link will describe some of the specific details about the town.  It is the closest town north of Quartzsite with any infrastructure that would draw you to shop there.  There is a Wal Mart and some medium sized grocery chains, plus a number of hardware stores, marine supply stores and typical retail establishments.  It is bordered on the Colorado River and just south of Lake Havasu so attracts a fair number of tourists that would be travelling to that area.

On the way up to Parker we noticed a large flat area to the West of the highway.  Google Maps shows it is the Copperstone Mine, but the owner of the mine Sabre Gold extracts gold from the open pit.  Now I suppose it is possible they used to extract copper but there is no mention of it in the company literature.  They appear to be running an active mine but there also does not appear to be a lot of infrastructure to indicate how big the operation is.

That lead me to looking at other mining concerns in the area and there is actually a large open pit copper mine north of this mine, called Mineral Park.  The link indicates it is still operational but the ownership of the mine has changed hands a lot so not exactly sure if that is an indication of the quality of the ore remaining and companies abilities to make money during the usual volatile copper industry, or some other reason.

It is clear there are certainly opportunities for mineral extraction in this part of the country, whether surface rocks and gems, or from the under the ground.  When you see the miles and miles of mountains, and rocks laying in the desert, you cant help but wonder if there is an unfounded mother lode out there.  When you look at the history of what happened throughout the West you also can imagine every inch has been staked at some point.