Fierro-Hanover
Deposit type & geology
Iron-zinc skarn-replacement deposits with byproduct gold.
Paleozoic carbonates adjacent to Laramide intrusive rocks, part of the same regional skarn belt as Santa Rita and Chloride Flat.
Age: Laramide (~58–75 Ma), consistent with the broader Santa Rita/Silver City-area intrusive suite.
Structural geology & terrain
Vein/structure orientation: Not vein-hosted — skarn, steeply (>80°E) dipping carbonates on the Barringer fault footwall
Named controlling structure: Barringer fault (named, ~1,600 ft displacement, predates the stock); Hanover-Fierro domal anticline; Fort Bayard arch
Elevation range: ~6,300–7,431 ft
Rolling hills adjacent to the Chino pit; terrain altered by mine expansion.
High-resolution terrain
~6 m/pixel lidar-derived hillshade (USGS 3DEP) — fine enough to reveal old mine workings, waste-rock piles, trenches, and roads the statewide terrain layer can’t show.
Historical production
>50,000 oz Au, 1880–1982 (NMBGMR Resource Map 24) — a genuinely significant total, comparable in scale to several of this map's more prominent districts, but as a byproduct of iron-zinc-copper skarn mining rather than dedicated gold production.
Sources: USGS Bulletin 1534; NMBGMR Resource Map 24 researched — see sources
Current status
Historic byproduct gold producer; current status not independently verified this session.
Recency not verified
Current claim/permit status was not independently researched this session — this district sits within the same general Grant County base-metal belt as the actively-producing Santa Rita/Chino and Tyrone mines, so nearby activity should not be assumed to extend here without direct confirmation.
Land ownership & directions
Land ownership for this district was not independently confirmed in this session's research — verify directly before relying on it.
Not independently confirmed this session. Villages of Fierro and Hanover, Grant County, near Santa Rita/Bayard.
See specimen photos (mindat.org) → — this app doesn’t host specimen photos itself; this searches mindat.org’s own mineral-specimen database, which isn’t necessarily specific to this exact district.
This pin is a generalized district/historic-site reference point, not a surveyed claim boundary — routes may cross private or patented inholdings where public access isn’t guaranteed even if a road reaches the site. Backcountry mine areas commonly have unmarked shafts, unstable ground, and no cell service; confirm current access and safety conditions (land manager, county, or landowner) before heading out.
Tailings reprocessing potential
A full century (1880–1982) of iron-zinc-copper skarn milling where gold was never the target commodity — a long operating history plus consistently byproduct-only gold recovery is this map's clearest profile for under-recovered tailings gold.
This is a documentary heuristic, not assay data.The tier above is inferred from historic production era, processing method, and ore character already cited elsewhere on this page — nobody has sampled or assayed this district’s tailings as part of this research. Actual recoverable gold content can only be established by physical sampling.
Reprocessing tailings is regulated mining. Disturbing or reprocessing historic mill waste requires the same NM Mining Act permitting as new mining (see the regulatory companion guide), regardless of who currently holds the claim or surface rights — and ownership of the tailings material itself is a separate legal question from mineral rights on the underlying land.
Legacy tailings can be hazardous. Pre-modern processing commonly used mercury (amalgamation) or cyanide (heap leach), and can carry elevated arsenic and other heavy metals — not a casual sampling target, and disturbing contaminated material can carry real environmental liability.
Geologist’s read
One of USGS Bulletin 1534's eight named component districts of the broader Silver City mining region — geologically the iron-zinc skarn-replacement counterpart to Santa Rita's porphyry copper, Chloride Flat's silver replacement, and Pinos Altos' epithermal veins, all clustered within roughly 20 miles of Silver City. Worth viewing alongside those entries as one interconnected mineral district complex rather than isolated points.