Rocky Point Airlines

La Pinta mine was rich enough in gold to send gold ore to England by sailing vessels. This trip was hazardous. Before the Panama Canal these ships had to sail around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America to reach England. this took place before the turn of the previous century.

This picture shows the La Pinta Mine with its many tiered layers of open pit mining.

The La Pinta mine as most Gold mines of this type have many hectors of leach fields where the rock is layered and softened. The difference in ground heating by the sun in midday of the lighter and darker areas causes a diferential in surface heating. This causes the dust devils or spiral tornado appearing columns of rising sand.

You need to see this first hand to appreciate the sights

These are just a few of the sights of this mine still active today. You can see work in progress with the trucks moving about. If you are lucky you can see some of the dynamite blasting.

The La Pinta Mine covers 3,198.2116 hectors.

Extensive sampling at the Dolores shaft has enabled calculation of "proven reserves" of only 2,250 tons averaging 16.16 grams/tons and "probable reserves" of 1,500 tons at a similar grade over a vein width of 0.3 meters. A two hundred kilogram sample of this material was extracted and processed utilizing a Knelson Concentrator (gravity concentration) with the gravity concentrator tailings subjected to cyanide leach. Recoveries in excess of 95% were achieved in all tests. In all cases the recovered grade from the metallurgical test work was higher than the indicated sample grade, thereby indicating the difficulty of accurately determining vein grade prior to actual extraction in this type of "nugget" lode gold deposit. The La Pinta shaft has been partially dewatered and the vein system has been mapped and sampled. Most of the vein material from the La Pinta shaft area has been mined, however small high grade ore blocks remain and the vein system at La Pinta is appreciably wider than at the Dolores shaft. It is believed that the named veins, La Pinta and Dolores, are fault segments of the same vein with the implication that the Dolores vein should widen below the current shaft bottom.