Geochemistry of Selected Mercury Mine-Tailings in the Parkfield Mercury District, California
By James J. Rytuba,1 Boris B. Kotlyar,1 Gregg Wilkerson,1 and Jerry Olson1
Open-File Report 01-336
Version 1.0
2001
U.S. Department of the Interior
Gail A. Norton, Secretary
U.S. Geological Survey
Charles G. Groat, Director
This report is preliminary and has not been reviewed for conformity with U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) editorial standards or with the North American Stratigraphic Code. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
1Menlo Park, CA 94025.
Summary
This publication is an online-only version of U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 01-336. The data for this publication total 10 MB.
Abstract
The Parkfield mercury district is located in the southern part of the California Coast Range mercury mineral belt and contains three silica-carbonate-type mercury deposits that have had significant mercury production. Mercury was first produced in the district in 1873, but the main period of production occurred from 1915-1922. Total production from the district is about 5,000 flasks of mercury (a flask equals 76 pounds of mercury) with most production coming from the Patriquin mine (1,875 flasks), and somewhat less from the King (1,600 flasks) and Dawson (1,470 flasks) mines. Several other small prospects and mines occur in the district but only minor production has come from them. In 1969, Phelan Sulphur Company carried out mineral exploration at the King mine and announced the discovery of 55,000 tons of mercury ore with an average grade of 5.2 pounds per ton.
The King mine is located on federal land administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Several other parcels of federal land are present adjacent to other mines and prospects in the Parkfield district. An environmental assessment of mine sites on and adjacent to federal land was carried out to determine the amount of mercury and other trace metals present in mine wastes and in sediments from streams impacted by past mining.
Location of the Parkfield mercury district (from Figure 1)
Contents
This publication consists of a Portable Document Format (PDF) file that contains 17 pages with 8 figures, and 1 table.
View the report as a PDF
The report is provided as a PDF file for which you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view. You can download a copy of the latest version (5.0 at the time of this publication) by clicking the button above.
To view the PDF file (of01-336.pdf), CLICK HERE (10 MB).
View the version history
CLICK HERE to view the version-history file for this report.
To contact the author, email James Rytuba (jrytuba@usgs.gov).
Privacy
statement -- General
disclaimer
URL
of this page: http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/01-336
Maintained by: Carolyn Donlin
Created: 27 September 2001
Last modified: 11 July 2002 (cad)