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Famous Mineral Localities: The Erupcion/Ahumada Mine: Los Lamentos District Chihuahua, Mexico
Mineralogical Record, Nov/Dec 2003 by Wilson, Wendell E
For decades the Ahumada lead mine in the Los Lamentos District, northeastern Chihuahua, has been famous among collectors for a single species: wulfenite. Los Lamentos ranks as one of the two most important and prolific producers of specimen-quality wulfenite in Mexico. Periodic discoveries have yielded an interesting variety of distinctive crystal habits, and a substantial portion of the productive zone remains preserved just below the water table.
LOCATION
The mines of the Los Lamentos district (also sometimes called the Bravos district) are located in the Sierra de Los Lamentos (Los Lamentos Range), about 50 miles east of Villa Ahumada, which is itself about 187 km (115 miles) south of El Paso, Texas, on highway 45. The range is within the municipio of Villa Ahumada. Some early specimen labels give Villa Ahumada as the locality for what is actually Los Lamentos wulfenite, probably because residents of Villa Ahumada often used to sell specimens. The original mining settlement at the site, connected to Villa Ahumada by a rough, unpaved road, was called Felix U. Gomez, but it is now a crumbling ghost town. The two principal mines, the Erupcion mine and the Ahumada mine, connect underground and occupy portions of a single deposit.
HISTORY
The Los Lamentos district derives its name from the mountain range in which, it is located, not because of any sorrowful lamentations of disappointed mineral collectors, but because of the peculiar sound made by wind passing through the limestone caverns.
Unlike many other Mexican mining districts, Los Lamentos was not an antigua-a term referring to the ancient workings of the early Spaniards. The first ore was discovered there by a Mexican, Jose Maria de la Pena, in 1907, who dug a 7-meter-deep prospect shaft which encountered high-grade cerussite ore. The original claim was then raffled off by Pena and won by David Fenchler; but the new owner did nothing to develop the workings further.
In 1905, two years preceding the actual discovery, Jose Maria de la Pena had suggested to David Bruce Smith (who had been in charge of the San Pedro de Corralitos mine in the Bravos district of Chihuahua from 1897 to 1904) that he should visit the Los Lamentos area. Smith finally made the trip in 1909, and examined the various claims and workings including the original Los Lamentos (Benito Juarez) claim and the Erupcion claim ("Erupcion" in Spanish refers to a "blow out" or prominent outcrop). In 1916 Smith returned again and purchased an option on the claims from Fenchler for $50,000.
Smith had two chief difficulties at the mine: not enough water and too many bandits. Russell Bennett (1963) visited the mine area in 1920 and described the recent unpleasantness there as follows:
A semblance of order was just being returned to Mexico, after the twelve-year chaos and bloodshed of the Madero Revolution. Then the Carranzistas were in nominal control of northern Mexico [following] the overthrow of the great Don Porfirio Diaz. But, although Carranza had been recognized, Pancho Villa was still at large, and had actual control in those areas where he chose to roam.
Villa was in a mood of violent hostility toward Americans. He had expected to be recognized by our government. When, instead, the United States recognized his archenemy, Carranza, and permitted Carranza's troops to go through U.S. territory in Arizona in order to attack Villa from the rear, Villa's rage knew no bounds. His answer was two-fold: the first to come was the Santa Ysabel massacre, in January 1916, in which 18 American mining men were taken off a train in western Chihuahua and shot. The second blow came in March 1916, in the form of a night raid on the town of Columbus, New Mexico, in which seventeen inhabitants were killed. This raid inspired the punitive expedition under General Pershing, sent into Mexico to get Villa dead or alive, which accomplished neither.
In the halcyon days of the magna pax of Diaz, American mining men had gone in large numbers into Mexico. This was during the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, when there was a Big Stick in the closet, when the doctrine of Manifest Destiny had not become unmentionable, and when the marines were available to land and take the situation in hand. But Teddy Roosevelt went out in 1908, two years before the beginning of the Madero Revolution. Succeeding administrations renounced his policies, and it was open season on American mining men across the length and breadth of Mexico. A few saw the handwriting on the wall and got out; the greater portion stayed on, many to meet their deaths. The Engineering and Mining Journal estimated that 270 American mining men died by violence in Mexico during the Madero Revolution.
Our driver and guide to the Los Lamentos mine was D. Brace Smith, originally from Dundee. He spoke English and Spanish alike with a Scotch burr. In 1916 he had succeeded in getting control of the Los Lamentos claims. This was the year of greatest violence against Americans, the year of the Santa Ysabel massacre and the Columbus raid. Smith had enlisted a partner in El Paso, E. F. Knotts, and the two would slip into the spot and do a bit of digging and blasting whenever the Mexican underground telegraph reported Villa to be elsewhere. Smith and Knotts took turns as a lookout from the peak overlooking the claims. They learned the art of reading dust clouds, like the plains and desert scouts of the Indian wars a half-century earlier. When a dust cloud betokened the approach of an armed force, they, with their Mexican helpers, would slip away, [later to] return and resume work.
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