DULZURA DISTRICT.
The Dulzura Mining District is 30 miles east and a little south of the city of San Diego, in a range of rather rugged mountains. Metamorphic rocks occur frequently, but masses of igneous rock have been intruded and constitute large hills throughout the district. Among these rocks are a light, greenish-gray feldspar porphyry, a dark-green, fine-grained diorite, a black aphanitic diorite, sometimes porphyritic, and a light cream-colored or greenish-white felsitic rock. In the immediate vicinity of Dulzura the latter rock occurs in the form of immense dikes striking northwest and southeast, crossing Cottonwood Creek to the south into Mexico. In one of these great dikes, which is several hundred feet in width, the mines of the district are found. They are principally chambered veins occurring on the line of a fault plane which has fractured the felsite, the hanging wall side of the slip going down, the movement causing the rock to become crushed and broken. Percolating waters have carried into the crushed mass mineral solutions, which have deposited the ores, chiefly iron sulphurets, where the most favorable conditions were found along the line of this fault plane. The subsequent oxidizing of the masses of ore thus formed has stained the rock a bright or dark red and sometimes yellow.
The rock contains gold ranging from a trace to $20 or over per ton. It was said the average was about $8. The oxidation of the ore bodies does not extend to any very great depth, the result being the occurrence of sulphuretted ores comparatively near the surface, though it was claimed by the mine owners that the sulphurets contained sufficient gold to make concentration and treatment by chlorination profitable. The mines are quite interesting from a geological point of view, and may, in time, prove equally so from a financial standpoint. No machinery had been built at the time of my visit. The felsite throughout the district, whenever observed, contained a considerable amount of pyrite, the surface rock nearly always presenting a highly mineralized appearance.