Grand Gulch Mine, Littlefield, Mohave County, AZ

Significance: The Grand Gulch Mine was established by Samuel L. Adams, Richard Bentley, and other men from the Mormon settlement at St. George, Utah, in the early 1870s to work a vein of rich copper ore called the Adams Lode located in a remote area of northwestern Arizona about 45 miles south of the Utah border. The first miners sank a shaft, commissioned an adobe smelter, and created a small compound of stone houses and workshops during a few years of intermittent mining, but ceased work in 1882 because of the insupportable expense of hauling ore 180 miles to the nearest railhead. Encouraged by railroad development in southern Utah, the Jennings family of Salt Lake City reopened the mine in 1899 and soon installed power machinery, rebuilt and expanded the complex of buildings, and sank a new shaft that, over the next two decades, reached a depth of 500' with drifts on multiple levels. The mine was essentially tapped out and closed in 1919, but for a few years ending in 1961, the dumps were sorted, chemical processing attempted, and much of the mine's equipment dismantled and hauled away for scrap, leaving the fragmented and confused landscape of tailings piles and ruined buildings that remains at the site today.
The Grand Gulch Mine represents the challenges small late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mine companies faced when trying to exploit economic minerals in isolated and inhospitable areas of the desert and mountain west. Burdened by a remote site where even water had to be hauled in but emboldened by the promise of profitable returns, the mine's owners consistently sought to improve the transportation connections that linked the mine to its suppliers and markets. Their efforts relied on regional railroad development, which gradually reduced the difficult wagon haul to about 140 miles in 1899, 73 miles in 1905, and finally to 45 miles in 1912, at each step decreasing the cost of freighting and expanding the range of ore grades the mine could economically send to market.
The mine lies within Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument. The original 20.66-acre Adam Lode mining claim, officially located June 23, 1873, and patented October 5, 1883, remains in private hands at the heart of the site. The balance of the mine is on public land and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management in cooperation with the National Park Service.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1273
Survey number: HAER AZ-78
Building/structure dates: ca. 1871- ca. 1882 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1898 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1900 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1901 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: after. 1920- before. 1925 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: after. 1955- before. 1959 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 1961 Demolished