Brewster Mine, Picher Field, Ottawa County, Oklahoma, USAi

Regional Level Types
Brewster Mine	Mine
Picher Field	Mining Field
Ottawa County	County
Oklahoma	State
USA	Country

The Brewster mine, Federal Mining and Smelting company, is located on an eighty-acre lease forming the S. ½ SE. ¼ sec. 15, T. 29 N., R. 23 E. The mine was begun in 1919 and the production from 1919 to 1928 was 112,098 tons of zinc concentrates and 14,957 tons of lead concentrates, the total value of lead and zinc concentrates being $6,235,313.

The mine was operated from four shafts, No. 1 and No. 2 on the west forty acres, and No. 3 and No. 4 on the east forty acres. The collars of the shafts have an elevation varying between 831 and 834 feet. The mining levels in the various shafts are nearly at the same depth, being 231 feet at shaft 1, 219 feet at shaft 2, 211 feet at shaft 3, and 214 feet at shaft 4, below the surface. The ore-body throughout is in the same stratigraphic horizon of the Boone formation, showing a slight slope to the west in conformity with the regional westward dip of the strata.

The width of the stopes is usually from fifty to one hundred feet, but their height is greater in the eastern than in the western part of the mine, being twenty to sixty feet high in the eastern and ten to thirty feet in the western part.

Two types of ore-bearing ground may be recognized at the same level. In the western forty acres of the lease the ground is relatively “hard” and “tight.” In the eastern part, near shafts 1 and 2 and the ground is “open” and “bouldery.” The boundary between the “tight” and “open” ground is relatively sharply defined by a much fractured zone of rock trending north and south.

The trend and dip of fracturing in the Brewster mine is shown on the fracture map, Plate III. Most of the prominent fractures trend slightly west of north and in this direction the stopes are relatively high and narrow. In general contrast the stopes trending nearly E-W are low and wide.

About 250 feet southwest of shaft 3 anglesite, altered from galena, occurs in a flat thin seam of galena in flint rock, the seam having a lateral extension of one hundred to 150 feet in the upper part of a pillar. The anglesite is not associated with any oxidized ore of either sphalerite or galena.

In the southeast part of the mine, southeast of shaft 4, the temperature of the air is higher than normal because of the oxidization of marcasite.

Black shale, mainly Cherokee, in the eastern part of the lease is thirty to forty feet thick and in the western part fifty to sixty feet. The Mayes formation of brown and gray limestone, twenty to thirty feet thick, lies between the black shale and the Boone. The oolite horizon is at a depth of 170 to 180 feet, about 125 feet below the top of the Boone.