5/8/2023 0 Comments Radium coloradoA zinc oxide plant built at Cañon City led to an increase in the 1890s. Zinc production did not begin in Colorado until the mid-1880s. One of the state’s few large copper mines opened north of Salidain 1884, and production ramped up even more when Lake County began to ship copper in 1889. In the 1870s, mines in Park County and the San Juans started to produce some copper as well. Lake County dominated the state’s lead production throughout the 1880s and 1890s, with Pitkin County and the San Juans making significant contributions as well.Ĭopper was an early byproduct of ores in Gilpin and Clear Creek Counties. The discovery of silver-bearing lead carbonates in Leadville later that decade caused Colorado’s lead production to soar by 1880, Leadville led the world in silver-lead smelting. Lead was shipped from Gilpin, Clear Creek, Summit, and Park Counties starting in the early 1870s, after techniques for silver-lead smelting were developed. These low prices meant that as long as gold and silver retained their shiny luster, base and industrial metals remained largely byproducts recovered from the pursuit of precious metals but not worth seeking out on their own.īecause lead was often bound up with silver and had various industrial applications, it saw the earliest and largest production among Colorado’s base and industrial metals. Early Decadesĭuring the early decades of Colorado mining, prices for base metals were usually quite low compared to the precious metals that drove the boom: four to eight cents per pound for lead, three to thirteen cents per pound for zinc, and as much as a quarter per pound for copper. Tungsten production was concentrated in Boulder County. Lake County dominated the production of all these metals, with the San Juan region also contributing. In general, the areas with the greatest production of precious metals such as gold and silver have also yielded the largest amounts of base and industrial metals such as lead, copper, zinc, and molybdenum. The main outliers are radium, vanadium, and uranium, found primarily on the Colorado Plateau near the Utah border, especially in and around the Paradox Valley. As the magma solidified, it took the form of mineralized bands called veins.Īs a result of this origin, most of Colorado’s metals occur in a diagonal belt stretching roughly from Boulder County to the San Juan Mountains. Superheated magma rose into rocks deep under the surface, creating pressure and rising through faults and fissures. In Colorado, the mineral-containing rock known as ore was originally formed during the uplifts of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains (300 million years ago) and the modern Rockies (70–45 million years ago). Uranium is less radioactive and was regarded as a waste product until World War II, when it became a key ingredient in nuclear weapons and, later, nuclear power plants. Radium is highly radioactive and was used in the early twentieth century for illumination and as a cancer treatment. Molybdenum, tungsten, and vanadium are used primarily to harden or toughen steel. Zinc forms a number of useful alloys and compounds, such as brass (made with copper) and zinc oxide (used as a white pigment and in mineral sunscreens) on its own, it prevents corrosion in batteries and on iron and steel through galvanization. Copper’s high conductivity makes it ideal for electrical uses, especially as a wiring material. Lead is used in bullets and batteries and has a wide variety of applications in construction, though its dangerous health effects have caused it to be phased out of pipes, paints, and gasoline. In contrast to precious metals such as gold and silver, which are highly valued for their own sake, base and industrial metals tend (with some exceptions) to be worth less and are valuable mainly for their commercial and industrial uses. Today molybdenum has become the most important metal in Colorado, with giant mines operating in Lake and Clear Creek Counties. Most mining died out after World War II, but the Cold War spurred ongoing molybdenum production and a uranium boom. Production of these metals typically started in the 1870s or 1880s, increased in the 1890s and 1900s, and experienced later peaks as prices surged with high demand during the world wars. Often ignored or discarded during early prospecting and mining, these base and industrial metals helped sustain mining operations after the silver crash of 1893. Miners came to Colorado for gold, stayed for silver, and survived after the 1890s by diversifying into a wide range of base and industrial metals such as lead, copper, zinc, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, radium, and uranium.
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