Tucson

Location

Multiple

In 1875 Tully, Ochoa and Company were operating two smelting furnaces in their Tucson corral at Ochoa and Stone. They reduced ore from their own copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains as well as that of other mines in the region. There are references to a two stack smelter in Tucson in the period 1891 to 1895 and to a smelter on Los Reales Road, east of the Santa Cruz river.

The Total Wreck mine in the northeast part of the Empire Mountains produced wulfrenite concentrates in 1917 and 1918. Some of these concentrates were shipped to Molybdenum Products Company in Tucson. During the first part of 1917 this firm treated the wulfrenite in a reverberatory furnace with soda ash to make a sodium molybdenat slag and metallic lead. Later a blast furnace was put up and the same products were made in it. For a time it was difficult to sell either the concentrates or the sodium molybdenate. Ferro-molybdenum was made in small electric furnaces manufactured at the plant.⁸

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References

1. Mineral Appraisal of Coronado National Forest, Part 12, Santa Rita Mountains Unit, MLA11-94 (1994). SR 591-609
   http://repository.azgs.az.gov/sites/default/files/dlio/files/nid1813/usbm_mla_011-94.pdf ore via
2. Mining in the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains of Arizona, U.S. Department of Interior, 1915. Republished 2014 by Kerby Jackson.
3. Mike Bertram,
4. USGS Mineral Resources Data System - using WGS84 (https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/map-commodity.html#home)
5. Index of Mining Properties in Santa Cruz County by Staton B. Keith, bulletin 191, Arizona Geological Survey, 1975
6. Index of Mining Properties in Pima County by Staton B. Keith, bulletin 189, Arizona Geological Survey, 1974
7. https://www.rvwest.com/article/benson/All_aboard_and_headed_for_Benson
8. History of Smelting in Arizona, by Forrest R. Rickard, 1987; in History of Mining in Arizona, J. Michael Canty and Michael N. Greeley, eds. Published by the Mining Club of the Southwest Foundation, Tucson, Arizona, 1987.