Description:
The Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area (Figure) covers a wide swath of historic and productive porphyry copper mining in southern Arizona, and mining has long been an important of the history of this region. Our newest Open-File Report, Preliminary evaluation of mineral resources of the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area, Arizona, provides a brief assessment of the mineral resources of the roughly 3,600 square miles (9,378 square kilometers; 2,304,000 acres) of those portions of Pima and Santa Cruz Counties encompassed by the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area.
Mineral assessment is largely confined to metallic minerals - copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc and molybdenum extracted from the 20 metallic mineral districts within the heritage area which includes hundreds of mines. Aggregate resources, the building blocks of human society, are also an important component of the mineral resources of the Santa Cruz Valley area.