Nancy Hanks Gulch is located about 22 miles from downtown Grand Junction in Unaweep Canyon on the western slope of Colorado. Unaweep translates from the Ute Indians as “canyon with two mouths” which makes it unique due to the fact that it is the only canyon in the world with two mouths. It seems no one can come to a consensus on how the canyon was actually formed.
Mineralization in Unaweep Canyon was discovered in 1875 by a geologist with the Hayden Survey party. Prospecting and mining came to Unaweep Canyon along with livestock ranches in 1882.
A feature story appeared in the Grand Junction News on April 21, 1883. It tells of a visit to Unaweep and what they saw.
To reach the mines in 1883, a wagon trail connected Grand Junction to Whitewater. At that point, wagons were loaded onto a small ferry that could only carry one wagon at a time, across the Gunnison River. The trail then leads up the south rim of the canyon and did not drop into the canyon itself until the top of nine-mile hill / Cactus Park area.
The first thing to attract attention was at Hall & Allison’s Ranch, where the richest assay has been obtained. There an enormous fissure vein had poured its contents out on the surface in the form of a huge dyke. Some called it a blow-out, but it was too extensive and uniform in character. The overflow was thought to be so great that the cooled vein stands hundreds of feet high and can be traced for miles on both sides of the canyon. Hall & Allison went down 50 feet on that vein and had assays way up in the hundreds. It carried copper, gold and silver!
This story in the newspaper goes on to to talk about various claims and prospects in the area, with incredible assay numbers. The problem is none of the numbers were real! The story ends by says “It is safe to say that while gold and silver will be largely produced, the great feature of the district will be copper. Such specimens of copper have been already brought out of this land as no place, save Lake Superior region, ever produced. At the above described camp, some of the men had great masses of bullion which they had melted in a common forge. Beyond this much we can only speculate: but we have great faith in the final result”
June 1883 brought Captain James Anderson and his family to Unaweep Canyon, settling on land that would later be known as ” the Taylor Ranch”. He continued to exaggerate what was being found at the mines. He stated to the press on two different occasions that 9 different mines were producing amazing results. Once in 1886 and again in 1897, when he stated that they were getting 33% copper with 4.4 ounces of gold per ton… from the Humming Bird Mine!
His boasts included veins that were 12-14 feet in width and most assays exceeding 10% copper and some silver. Altogether, he listed 20 claims with operating mines. The “Big Blowout” was supposedly located on a claim that the vein could be traced for eight miles and “Gold Hill” was located on a vein twenty feet wide and nine miles long!!!
Mining was done by drilling and blasting the rock. A steam powered hoist was used to haul the rock and ore up from the bottom of the shaft. The same steam engine also powered an air compressor, used to drill the rock for dynamite charges.
In spite of the false reports coming from the district, copper mining continued until about 1912, when Captain Anderson and his family were run out of the canyon by an angry mob. His “final defending words” were that they had failed to locate the large copper-ore body that exists in that district. Oddly enough, not only is there a spike in the magnetometer reading for that area, there is also a gravity anomaly associated with it! So, he was right, but was never able to produce any real production numbers, except for one mine.
The Nancy Hanks mine was one of the most productive mines in the district. It produced 15 carloads (probably one-ton mine cars?) of ore from one stope that averaged 16% copper, $2 per ton gold (based on $20 per troy ounce), and 4 ounces of silver. The wagon loads were taken down the wagon road to Whitewater via block-and-tackle, across the river by ferry and loaded onto rail cars.
The district was prospected and evaluated for Fluorite in the 1940s for the war effort. Fluorite was also mined in the early 1970s by Eugene Talarico in Nancy Hanks Gulch, as a source material for hydrofluoric acid (one of the most dangerous substances on the planet) and as flux for steel making. To be profitable, large tonnages mined economically would have to be produced and due to poor vein quality and location, the venture could not satisfy this need.
Further up the canyon beyond the Nancy Hanks Gulch Mining District, many interesting mining discoveries were made.
Copper mining also began in Sinbad Valley in the 1890s.
From 1913 until 1922, high grade carnotite ores were being mined on Rock Creek, Calamity and Polar Mesas. for their radium content.
In 1928, a granite quarry was developed on the south rim of Unaweep Canyon. Only enough granite was mined to build the Customs Building in Denver.
In the late 1930s, a miner by the name of Kincaid has a molybdenite (molybdenum sulfide) prospect in a north-east end of the canyon.
In 1939, Gateway Alloys built a small mill that could run 15 tons per day, to process carnotite ore for vanadium, which is used in steel tool manufacturing. This operation as well as the vanadium mill in Uravan, ceased operation in 1944 when the government ended their buying program for vanadium as a strategic mineral during World War 2. Uranium in the mill tailings was later extracted for the Manhattan Project in Uravan (town named for URAanium and VANadium)
Many of the large pegmatite dikes in Unaweep Canyon contain the mineral beryl (beryllium oxide). In the 1940s, Albert Johnson mined beryl north of highway 141, He shipped hand sorted crystals to Brush Beryllium in Salt Lake City which were used in the production of atomic bomb triggers.
Directly across from the old granite quarry is a large tunnel. In the late 1940s, the Army Corp of Engineers conducted a study where they set off large blasts above the tunnel and measured the influence of the blasts underground. This was done to gain design specifications for the future underground NORAD installation, which was later constructed in Cheyenne Mountain, outside of Colorado Springs.
In 1948, the Atomic Energy Commission started a buying program for uranium which created a “boom” in the Gateway and surrounding areas. Many new mining districts popped up! Ores from these mining districts were trucked to Union Carbide’s planet in Uravan or to the Climax Uranium plant in Grand Junction. This time, the ores were processed for both uranium and vanadium.
Production was very successful until the Atomic Energy Commission ended its buying program in the early 1970s. Reduced production continued, mostly fueled by development of atomic power plants. Due to foreign competition by uranium producers and the price of uranium declining to the point where production stopped on the Uncompahgre Plateau. Production costs have risen dramatically due to the various multitudes of agencies (County, State and Federal) that impose environmental restraints on that industry. All uranium mining has ceased, with the exception environmental protection mediation activities.
Today, there is little mining activity going on in Unaweep Canyon. There is our mine in the Nancy Hanks Gulch Mining District and a decorative rock quarry a few miles up the road.