Quo Vadis Mine, Alunite Mining District, Clark County, Nevada, USAi

Regional Level Types
Quo Vadis Mine	Mine (Reclaimed)
Alunite Mining District	Mining District
Clark County	County
Nevada	State
USA	Country

It is not certain exactly when the Catlin brothers discovered the outcrop of rich gold ore, at what they named the Quo Vadis Mine, in a foothill of the McCullough Mountains near Las Vegas and filed the five Quo Vadis Claims covering the mineralized area. However by the middle of 1906 their find was locally well known, they had 2 partners, there were several claims under development adjacent to theirs, and they were able to attract a $200,000 investment from out of state miners (Las Vegas Times, June 9, 1906). They continued development and reportedly had five men employed. They shipped their first batch of hand sorted ore to the Salt Lake City smelter in February of 1907, on the newly completed San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake railroad.

By 1914 they had many feet of vein with high grad visible “picture” gold exposed. This was so spectacular that they invited potential buyers and interested towns people alike to come and have a look. Based on this showing the mine was again sold in 1014, this time for an undisclosed figure.
Even though the high grade vein was reportedly only 2 inches thick the samples consisting of more than half gold led to great excitement in the Las Vegas region. Many people expected this area to become another fabulously rich mining camp, as Nelson, a little farther south, had been some decades before. A town also named Quo Vadis was laid out. Building lots were advertised in the Las Vegas newspaper. Two saloons and a restaurant were said to be already in operation there. It was reported that about fifty men were prospecting the surrounding hills. An unknown number of people lived in Quo Vadis and a daily stage service between Las Vegas and Quo Vadis was set up using a six passenger car.

The new owners of the mine incorporated the Quo Vadis Mining Company in 1915 capitalized at $1,000,000 and offered stock for sale. At that time they stated that there was a 300 foot adit and a 90 foot deep shaft on the property. The company continued operation until 1923, but nothing seems to have been recorded concerning their subsequent operation, the extent of underground workings, or the total value of the gold that they recovered. Unfortunately also there is no record suggesting that any of the “jewelry gold” samples were preserved.

Ultimately no other rich gold ore was discovered near the Quo Vadis Mine and the boom for the town appears to have only lasted about a year. Nothing much remains of the old town now, but bulldozer tracks, piles of rusty tin cans, and an occasional piece of sheet metal show where it was.

A late gasp of activity occurred at the Quo Vadis when around 1936 a new shoot of high grade ore was discovered. The Boulder Canyon Mining Company was formed to develop it, but apparently ceased operations before WWII with a production of only around $35,000 (Longwell et al, 1965). During all this time the claims were never patented and no map showing their precise location seems to exist.

Up until the year 2000 claims were intermittently held in that general area and some additional prospecting seems to have been done with a bulldozer and a backhoe. Pits and small workings cover an area about 1000 feet in cross section. In 2000 the Nevada Mine Safety Program together with the BLM and with financing from Barrick Gold Corporation made a largely successful effort to totally obliterate the mine (Las Vegas Sun, September 19, 2000). In 2004 the area of the mine was added to the Sloan Canyon Conservation Area and both mining and rock collecting there are now prohibited. Fortunately a few micro mineral collectors visited the mine before this prohibition took place. Otherwise this piece of Nevada history has almost vanished.

The most recent and comprehensive discussion of the general geology of the region is by Smith et al (2010). The dominant rock in the region of the mine is hydrothermally altered Lower Farmer Canyon andesite. It was intruded and altered by the Railroad Canyon pluton dated at 14.99 my. This pluton outcrops in a small exposure near the mine. The whole area is crisscrossed by roughly orthogonal sets of closely spaced dikes. However the total displacements are thought to be relatively small. These dikes are presumably related to the volcanism that produced the Upper Farmer Canyon andesite prominently exposed farther to the west.

Shear motion continued during this volcanism resulting in multiple episode of dike filling. It also continued after the volcanism ended forming sporadic cavity areas partially filled with broken rock in or adjacent to the dikes. Upwelling solutions then frequently deposited quartz, calcite, and barite in the cavities, but apparently only sporadically deposited gold and sulfides. The open space never appears to have been totally filled. Quartz crystal invariable project into the remaining cavities, which are then sometimes filled with calcite. Mining operations appear to have largely taken place on 2 sets of generally north-south trending shears separated by about 1000 feet in the east-west direction.

Unfortunately a serious error appears to have crept into the modern literature referring to this mine. It is stated by Stager and Tingley (1988) that the Farmer Group of claims is synonymous with the Quo Vadis Mine and that scheelite ore was shipped from the property. Both statements appear to be incorrect, but they could easily be a result of a simple misinterpretation of USGS tungsten production records. A single Farmer Claim was filed in the quarter section adjacent to the Quo Vadis Mine during the 1970s (The Diggings website) and the same owner held more than a dozen other claims in other locations. It seems likely that he shipped tungsten ore from a totally unrelated one of his claims in 1973 and listed it simply as coming from the Farmer Group of claims, and that location was duly recorded in USGS records. Then the seemingly logical, but incorrect, assumptions seem to have been drawn that the Farmer Group was the same as the Quo Vadis Mine and that scheelite was found there. This interpretation of the events leading to the error is supported by evaluations of the Quo Vadis mine prepared by Smith in 1982 (Nevada Bureau of Mines open file report 2400008) and Smith and Tingley 1983 (Nevada Bureau of Mines open file report 2400004). Neither of these reports prepared within ten years of the reported shipment mention the Farmer Group or any tungsten production or mineralization at the Quo Vadis Mine.

Other Databases

Link to USGS MRDS:	10014356

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References