Minerals are New Mexico’s richest natural resource, and contribute heavily to the state’s income. From turquoise to bat guano (bat excretions), New Mexicans have been mining this land for hundreds of years.

Coal production in New Mexico has been a large contributor to the state’s economy beginning as far back as 1850. The army used coal during the civil war. Even ranchers from our border state of Texas used to travel to New Mexico and return home with wagon-loads of coal to last through their winters.

The coming of the railroads between 1879 and 1882 put coal production on a firm footing. The first coal mining area opened was in Colfax County near Raton, and this district traditionally led the state in production. In 1882 the railroad reached Gallup, and existing mines in the neighborhood were promptly put into production to supply most of the coal used by locomotives en route to California.

When coal mining was at its peak, the Raton field and the portion of the San Juan Basin near Gallup accounted for about 90% of the state’s total coal output, although mines throughout the state were worked to supply local needs. One example, mines in Lincoln County employed 300 men to produce over 120,000 tons of coal in 1902.

At its production peak, in 1918, the coal industry in New Mexico produced more than 4,000,000 tons of coal per year from sixty-one mines and employed 5,000 workers.

Over the past several hundred years, New Mexico has also produced good amounts of gold. The first recorded gold discovery in the state happened in 1828 in Old Placers. The discovery was followed by establishments of many other New Mexico gold mines. Prior to 1904, total gold production from New Mexico was worth $6,750,000. Much of the gold is a byproduct of mining activities for other minerals. About a decade ago, all New Mexico gold mines ceased to exist. There may be gold out there still, but it has yet to be found! This has left a lot of ghost towns throughout the state.

There is still an open-pit copper mine located near Silver City, New Mexico. The mine, Chino Copper Co. is located in the town of Santa Rita, 15 miles east of Silver City. It began life as the Chino Copper Company in 1909, and was started by mining engineer John M. Sully. The huge open-pit mine was once the largest in the world and is perhaps the oldest mining site still being used in the American southwest. Apaches, Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans have all obtained native copper and copper ore from this site. The present-day open-pit mining operation was begun in 1910. It is the third oldest open pit copper mine in the world.

The first uranium production in New Mexico was a minor amount of autunite and torbernite mined circa 1920 from former silver mines in the White Signal district, about 15 miles southwest of Silver City in Grant County. New Mexico was a significant uranium producer since the discovery of uranium by Navajo sheepherder Paddy Martinez in 1950. Uranium in New Mexico is almost all in the Grants mineral belt, along the south margin of the San Juan Basin in the northwest part of the state. Stretching northwest to southeast, the mineral belt contains the Chuska, Gallup, Ambrosia Lake, and Laguna uranium mining districts. Uranium mining in New Mexico was a significant industry from the early 1950s until the early 1980s. Although New Mexico has the second largest identified uranium ore reserves of any state in the US (after Wyoming), no uranium ore has been mined in New Mexico since 1998, however.

Throughout the history of the state, mining has existed in a number of resources from silver, gold, coal, uranium, diamond, copper, turquoise, and more. The state has rich resources and for centuries, has been a large contributor to the economy of New Mexico, and mines have employed a large population of citizens. The history is rich and is part of how the state has continued to be prosperous.