The Mysterious Kingston Silver Ledge

New Mexico has always been a silver state. A number of famous mining districts were founded on the white metal, including Chloride, Black Hawk, Hermosa, Burro Mountain, Georgetown, and Lake Valley. Some of the silver deposits were incredibly rich.

The Black Hawk mine near Bullard Peak is a case in point. The ore body consisted of nearly pure silver at the surface. The miners soon discovered that this was only the tip of the iceberg. It turned out that the tenor of the ore persisted at depth, extending for over 20 feet below the surface.

Chloride is the home of the fabulous “Bridal Chamber”, one of the richest bodies of ore ever discovered. Located in 1884, the legendary underground grotto was literally coated with silver chloride.

The Black Range is truly silver country. Home to several silver-producing districts including Chloride, Kingston, and Hermosa, the range has produced a stream of precious metal. Needless to say, the region has more than its share of lost mines and hidden lodes. One of them lies in the Kingston Mining District, near the southern end of the Black Range.

Some lodes or veins are lost before they’re found! That is, sometimes prospectors find the erosional remnants of a vein but are unable to locate the source itself. This happened in the Klondike, in western Australia, and it also occurred in the Carbonate Creek area of New Mexico.

1882 was a pivotal year in the history of the southern Black Range. It was in August of that year that the rich Solitaire Mine was discovered by a prospector named Jack Sheddon. Prospectors and mining men poured into the southern part of the range. Soon to be called the Kingston Mining District, the area would eventually produce over $6 million worth of silver.

During that same year, another amazing discovery took place on Carbonate Creek, only 3 miles north of Kingston. Two prospectors named Shedd and Henry stumbled on a field of incredibly rich silver-bearing “float” along the Carbonate Creek drainage. (It is possible that Jack Sheddon was one of the discoverers of the Carbonate Creek deposits; the surnames “Shedd” and “Sheddon” are extremely similar.)

The ore was composed of acanthite or silver sulfide, one of the richest ores of silver. Pieces of float ranging from marble-size to huge 250 pound masses were found scattered on the surface! Eventually, more than 80,000 ounces of silver were recovered, but curiously the source of the acanthite float was never found.