This is the preview post #3 for the 2022 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Live Auction.  The show is on March 19th and 20th, 2022 at the DuPage County Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL.  All details can be found here.

Here’s another mineral specimen for the live auction at the ESCONI show.  This is fluorite from the famous Royal Flush Mine in Bingham, New Mexico.

The Mex-Tex mine, in New Mexico’s famous Hansonburg district, has been operated solely for mineral specimens since 1987. Fine specimens of spangolite, brochantite, creedite, cyanotrichite, fluorite, linarite, tsumebite and wulfenite have been recovered.

INTRODUCTION

The history, geology and mineralogy of the Hansonburg mining district, including the Mex-Tex mine, was comprehensively covered by Taggart, Rosenzweig and Foord in an article published in Volume 20 (1989) (The New Mexico Issue) of the Mineralogical Record. A great deal of activity and new information specifically related to the Mex-Tex mine has come to light in the years following that publication. The intent of this article is to present a chronology of significant events that have occurred at the mine related to the discovery of new or important minerals and also other incidents which have impacted on mineral collecting at the Mex-Tex mine.

Activity at the Blanchard mine, which is approximately 1 mile south of the Mex-Tex mine, has in many ways paralleled developments at the Mex-Tex. The mineralogy of the two mines to a large extent is also very similar, but notable differences do exist and are worthy of separate discussion.

HISTORY

Mining activity in the Hansonburg district can be traced back to 1872, but specific references to the location now known as the Mex-Tex mine were not made until 1947, when a claim was located by A. R. Hickey, W. Hickey and F. Kay of Artesia, New Mexico. They held 30 or more claims in the area (Clippinger, 1949). A second group of claims known as the Royal Flush was also located at the same time as the Mex-Tex group. The Royal Flush group is about a mile north and east of the Mex-Tex and has for some purposes been considered as part of the “Mex-Tex group.” The Royal Flush will not, however, be considered as part of the Mex-Tex mine for the purposes of this article.

The group of 30 claims known as the Mex-Tex, owned by A. R. Hickey and associates, operated under the name of the Mex-Tex Mining Company. Work done by this concern consisted of road building and the excavation of a few open cuts (Williams et al., 1964). In early 1950, two men named Erwin and Bishop from Houston, Texas, who had control of the Royal Flush claims, purchased the Mex-Tex group but retained the name Mex-Tex Mining Company. They completed construction of a 200-ton-per-day barite mill near San Antonio, New Mexico (about 30 miles west of the mine). From late 1950 through 1958, the company produced 34,056 tons of barite. The Atomic Mineral Corporation purchased the Mex-Tex property in July of 1959, and it was then operated by a lessee, Galber, Inc., of Carlsbad (Lee Downey, president and general manager). In 1959 and 1960, the company produced 812 tons of barite (Williams et al., 1964). In the early 1960’s, Galber Inc. mined and explored the Mex-Tex and other adjoining properties and shipped several carloads of lead concentrate by truck and rail to the ASARCO smelter in El Paso, Texas, 220 miles to the south (Kottlowski, 1979). Mining activity at the Mex-Tex mine virtually ceased thereafter. Total recorded production of barite in New Mexico up to and including 1962 was 36,118 tons, mined in nine of the state’s 32 counties. However, 96.5% of the total had been obtained from a single deposit, the Mex-Tex mine (Williams et al., 1964).

From 1964 to 1987, the ownership of the Mex-Tex mine is not clear. The Sunshine Mining Company which held claims at the nearby Blanchard mine most likely also held claims at the Mex-Tex group of mines in the mid to late 1960’s. A series of corporations including Basic Earth Science Systems, Inc., Hansonburg Mines Inc., and Western General Resources, Inc., exercised control in the 1970’s to 1983. In 1983, however, Western General Resources, Inc., did not complete the required annual assessment work and the property reverted to public domain. From 1983 to 1987 the entire Hansonburg district remained open to claim.

In May of 1987, the Mex-Tex mine was relocated as two claims (Dean Alexander and Ginger-Brandy) by one of the authors (TM) and Robert Dickie of Albuquerque, whose intention was to operate the mine for the production of mineral specimens. Since that time, the claims have been operated exclusively for the production of mineral specimens for collectors.