[Illustration: At Climax, the ore occurs scattered through the intrusive
Climax Granite Porphyry and the intruded Idaho Springs Formation.
Visitors can tour the surface workings during the summer months.]
Tertiary dikes
Shell of Climax stock
Core of Climax stock
Ore zone
Precambrian granite
Fault
Dykes
Molybdenum now ranks as the number one metal mined in Colorado. Over
$105,000,000 of “moly” was mined here during 1969, almost all of it from
the Climax Mine, the world’s largest single source of this metal. The
Climax deposit is located high on the west slope of Ten Mile Range in
central Colorado, about 100 miles southwest of Denver. It is in the
central part of the Colorado mineral belt, near the Mosquito Fault, a
prominent structural feature which extends about sixty miles along the
north-south trend of the mountains. Rocks on both sides of this fault
are intruded by Tertiary granite dikes, sills, and stocks. The Climax
Mine is in a stock just east of the fault, near the axis of a broad
anticline in Precambrian metamorphic rocks.
Ore minerals at Climax are molybdenite, huebnerite, and cassiterite;
pyrite is recovered also for the manufacture of sulfuric acid. The ore
is very low in metal content, containing only one-third of a percent of
molybdenum, 0.005% tungsten trioxide, and 0.0001% tin. The great size of
the ore body and efficient recovery by modern methods make Climax a
profitable mine, however. Production has risen each year since the mine
began operation.
Urad Mine near Berthoud Pass is a newly developed near-surface
molybdenum mine similar to Climax. Nearby at the Henderson Mine the ore
body is more than half a mile below the surface of the ground.