What Are the Mines along I-15 on the Way to Las Vegas from California?

On the way up I-15 from Victorville to Las Vegas are a number of mining operations. There appear to be one at Victorville east of the freeway, one at Baker, a very large one north of Baker ,and one on the southwest side of Las Vegas. What are the companies and what are they mining?

For this answer, we had to do a little digging, so to speak.

The easiest to track down was the mine closest (53 miles) to Las Vegas. It's the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine & Processing Facility and it produces, obviously, rare earth. The mine, which sits on the southern flank of Clark Mountain, is run by the Department of Defense, which is seeking heavy rare-earth metals as a hedge against supply-chain problems. Rare earth is a group of chemically similar metallic elements used extensively in our devices: the screens of smart phones, computers, and flat-panel televisions; the motors of computer drives; the batteries of hybrid and electric cars; and new-generation light bulbs.

Heavy deposits of calcite and dolomite are also among the minerals found in this area. When these deposits were discovered in 1949, Molybdenum Corporation of America snapped up the area and began mining three years later. Production at the mine, which had passed through the hands of Union Oil and Chevron, ceased in 2012, due to a chemical spill. It was restarted later that year, only to be halted a few months later.

Molybdenum Corp. went bankrupt in 2015 and the mine was purchased out of insolvency in 2017 by an international consortium. The latter includes Shenghe Resources Holding Co., a Chinese sovereign fund.

Information on what you saw outside Victorville is far from definitive, partly because the region is a hotbed of mining activity. Some evidence points to Higginsville Gold Mine, owned by Avoca Resources. Gold was struck here in 2004 and extraction began in 2007.

The mine at Baker could be the Wanderer Gold Mine, but again, the available information is far from conclusive.

To the west of Baker is the Otto Mountain/Silver Lake Mining District, where there are at least two mines. We found a list that includes 45 minerals mined in the area, from acanthite to yafsoanite, with more calcite, plus dolomite, fluorite, galena, gold, hagstromite (found only in this area), pyrite, quartz, and wolfenite in between.

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Jackie May-17-2023

Gold mines

The price of gold at $2k/oz is getting close to all of the old Nevada gold mines reopening.
Plenty of gold still left in those mines, it just isn't profitable right now to get the gold out of the mine.
If the price can hold at over at $2K for several months, those mines will start producing again.
Of course if the price drops back down to this last years low of $1700 production will stop.

BTW, recent speculation, if gold hits $5K/oz our dollar may go back on the gold standard.
Don't hold your breath for that one!

gaattc2001 May-17-2023

The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine has had its ups and downs....

In the 80's, I saw an R-J ad for a QC job there: living in barracks at the mine for ten days, then four days off in Vegas. I thought about it, but didn't apply.
This mine was the source of Europium in virtually every color picture tube in the world; Gadolinium as a contrast agent in MRI's, Neodymium for high-performance electric motors in EV's, and Samarium in refrigerator magnets.
But apparently the "mix" of rare earth elements wasn't ideal for the needs of the time, and traces of Thorium and Radium caused contamination problems. They pumped waste water down to evaporation ponds at Ivanpah dry lake, had a bunch of spills, got in trouble with the EPA, and were shut down at least once. Now they're having a strategic resurgence, since the only other major source of this stuff is China.
I'm up against 1,000 characters as usual, but here are a couple of links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine
http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=35.478565&lon=-115.532570&z=15&m=bh

[email protected] May-17-2023

Be CAREFUL Exploring Old Mines

It's kind of cool to check out old mines around Las Vegas and southern Nevada but a couple things to keep in mind. Plenty of "open" mine shafts in caves and such that could be hundreds of feet deep so do not attempt to enter ANY mine cave unless you have a lot of light. If you tumble in nobody is ever going to find your rotted carcass. Also, if you see any "posted" KEEP OUT areas anywhere near past mined areas pay attention because the guys that either own the mineral rights or are just prospecting could still be digging for the gold (typically) and they look at outsiders as potential thieves and will very likely be carrying weapons.

Question of the Day - 17 May 2023

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