The U.V.X., A Mining Adventure

In the history of American mining, so far as I know, there is no cleaner, brighter, or more completely successful mining adventure than that of the United Verde Extension.* It deserves to be placed on record here. The mine is at Jerome, 25 miles northeast of Prescott, in Yavapai county, Arizona. For 30 years before the U.V.X., as it is known to mining men, achieved celebrity, the Jerome district was identified with a copper mine, the United Verde, one of the great mines of the world. The success of this mine, of course, stimulated the search for similar orebodies, or for an extension of those already known, in adjacent ground; but, despite vigorous prospecting, the United Verde remained for many years alone in its glory. The reason for this solitariness was geologic: a fault with a big throw frustrated the effort to trace the ore-zone, thereby causing exploratory work to be both uncertain and costly. Despite these failures to develop other mines in the vicinity, the belief persisted that all the ore was not localized in the United Verde mine, but before we consider the reasons for such a belief we must look at the geologic conditions. The basal rock of the Jerome district is a schist, which has been correlated with the Yavapai formation of the Bradshaw quadrangle. This schist is geologically ancient, for it is of pre-Cambrian age. It is composed of volcanic tuffs, together with sediments, both argillaceous and siliceous, all of which