Description:
Deposits of pegmatite minerals are known from many parts
of Arizona, and from time to time efforts have been made to
develop some of them as commercial sources of feldspar, quartz,
mica, beryl, lithium minerals, tungsten minerals, tantalum-columbium
minerals, and other salable commodities. The pegmatites
occur mainly in terranes or relatively old, crystalline
rocks that appear within the Mexican Highland and Sonoran
Desert portions of the state. These physical divisions of the
Basin and Range province extend southeasterly from the Colorado
River to the southern and eastern borders of the state, and
lie southwest of the broad Colorado Plateau province (Fig. 1).
Most of the largest and best known deposits lie within the
so-called Arizona pegmatite belt, which is about 250 miles long,
30 to 80 miles wide, and extends south-southeastward from Lake
Mead through parts of Mohave, Yavapai, Yuma, and Maricopa
counties to points south of Phoenix (Fig. 1).
The mine and mill of the Consolidated Feldspar Corporation,
a few miles northeast of Kingman in the northern part of the
pegmatite belt, represent by far the largest and longest-lived
of the commercial operations for pegmatite minerals. A production
of more than 100,000 tons of crude and ground feldspar
has been obtained during the past three decades, and future
operations should contribute substantially to this total. Both
feldspar and ceramic-grade quartz have been taken from other
deposits in the belt, but on a considerably smaller scale. Some
sheet mica was produced during World War II from the Mica
Giant pegmatite, southeast of Kingman, and modest amounts of
scrap mica have been mined over a long period of years from
other properties in the Hualapai Mountains, as well as from
pegmatites north of Chloride, in central western Mohave County;
others in the Weaver, Bradshaw, and Wickenburg Mountains of
southern Yavapai County; and from still others in various parts
of Maricopa County.