Congress Mine

The Congress Mine is a gold mine located at the ghost town of Congress, Arizona on the southeastern slope of the Date Creek Mountains, approximately 18 miles north-northeast of Wickenburg, Arizona at an elevation of about 3,000 feet (Lat. 34.216 - Long. -122.841). The nearest community, four miles away, is modern Congress, formerly known as Congress Jct railroad station or Martinez Post Office. The Congress Mine produced substantial quantities of Gold and was considered one of the most productive gold mines in Arizona.

The gold found in the mine was primarily small veins embedded in white quartz with inclusions of iron pyrite (fool's gold), iron and sulfur. The Congress vein was considered to be a peculiar formation, characterized as "a dike of green stone trap." The ore ran through this dike and the dike was found throughout the entire geographical ledge. The most valuable ore bearing rocks could be found lodged on or near a foot wall in the ledge usually in drifts 12 to 15 feet high. The vein had a dip of 22 degrees and was usually about 15 feet wide. The vein was accessed by shafts dug (often quite deep) into the areas around the ledge.

Following the placer gold rush to the nearby Weaver district in 1863-4, prospectors began scouring the surrounding hills for gold lodes. In the 1860s miners organized the Date Creek Mining District (later renamed the Martinez district) after discovering gold in the Date Creek Mountains. One of the early prospectors was Dennis May, who would later discover the Congress Mine, but not until twenty years of sporadic, small scale operations in the immediate area. According to the Martinez Mining District records held by the Sharlot Hall Museum, Prescott, May first co-located a claim on the "Date Creek Lode" in 1870. By 1880, he was working what would become the Congress mine, staking with two prospector partners the Niagara claim June 26, 1880, followed by the adjacent Congress claim March 25, 1884. From Buffalo, New York and in Arizona since 1866, May was a typical single-blanket prospector. In the early 1880s he was able to sell some other claims through mine promoter Frank Murphy, and began a more thorough working of the Congress group of claims. Here he found his bonanza.

May, again through promoter Frank Murphy, sold the Congress group in 1887 to Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds for $30,000. Properly capitalized as the Congress Gold Company, a stamp mill was built and the mine opened. In 1891, while visiting his mine with Frank Murphy, the colorful Diamond Jo Reynolds died. Reynolds, childless, willed a part ownership of the mine to Murphy, who shut it down while promoting and building the railroad from Ash Fork on the Santa Fe mainline (across northern Arizona) to Phoenix via Prescott and via a point near the Congress mine. In 1894, with the railroad nearing completion of construction, Murphy and the Reynolds estate sold the Congress gold mine to a group of Tombstone mine owners (Tombstone's silver boom was bust). Headed by E.B. Gage, formerly superintendent of the Grand Central in Tombstone, the company relocated its miners and mill men to open the Congress. Financing came from the Grand Central backers, principally N.K. Fairbank of Chicago and Charles D. Arms and partners of Youngstown, Ohio. As superintendent they hired William F Staunton, formerly of the Tombstone M&M Co., who expanded operations, expanded the mill to 40 stamps, introduced the cyanide process, and turned the Congress into territorial Arizona's biggest gold producer.

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