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Column No. 38
Bob Ring, Al Ring, Tallia Pfrimmer Cahoon
Local assayer and miner Hugo Miller became the official owner of the Montana
mine and Ruby on December 15, 1946. Though a far cry from Eagle-Picher’s
300-miner Montana operation in the mid 1930s, Miller soon had five men working
five days a week in development and production operations.
Eagle-Picher had dismantled and removed their mining equipment, including the
huge head frame over the main shaft, so Miller had to build his own. From scrap
material, Miller built a portable head frame, using 4-inch pipe. The whole
assembly could be taken down by the removal of 20 nuts on the tie rods and top
members.
Miller and his crew, including his son Hugo S. Miller, started crosscutting at
the 50-foot and 100-foot levels. They found a four-foot ore body that carried
good values in lead as well as lesser quantities of zinc and silver.
Miller trucked his ore through Arivaca to the railroad in Amado, where his crew
hand-loaded ore cars. From Amado, Miller shipped the ore to the smelter in
Douglas, Arizona for processing.
On the afternoon of January 24, 1951, at age 61, Hugo Miller suffered a horrible
automobile accident on the Ruby road. While enroute to Nogales from Ruby, Miller
lost control of the car on a steep grade. The car went off the road and turned
over on its side, with Miller pinned underneath. Miller suffered four pelvic
fractures and internal injuries, but survived and after hours of surgery,
gradually recovered and was finally released from the hospital in August.
Miller worked the Montana mine through 1952, when depressed lead-zinc prices
made shipping unprofitable.
Miller’s total production at the Montana was 400,000 pounds of lead, 20,000
pounds of zinc, with small amounts of silver and gold.
While Hugo Miller was busy mining at the Montana, he also expanded the group of
Montana mines. The group of patented Montana mining claims (initially 10 claims
in 1907, then 19 claims since 1933) had been referred to collectively as the
Montana Group. However, Hugo Miller added two additional groups of unpatented
mining claims. Starting in 1950, the Santa Cruz County Recorders Office has
identified the entire group of mining claims as the Consolidated Montana Mine
Group.
The first group Miller added was the old Miller-Hanson group of claims that
Miller had first bought into as a partner in 1939 and took over completely in
1943. These mining claims were just west of the 19-patented Montana claims.
The second group of claims that Miller added was the Rubiana group. By 1954,
this group consisted of two subgroups, one just west of the patented mines, and
interspersed with the Miller-Hanson group, and the other, between the northern
and southern groups of patented Montana claims. Miller had started working the
“western” part of this group in the early 1940s, but did not locate the claims
in the southern group until the early 1950s.
By the mid 1950s, Hugo Miller’s actual mining operations with the Consolidated
Montana Mine Group had virtually ceased. He stopped shipping lead and zinc from
the original Montana mine in 1952. The prospects for substantial lead, zinc,
gold, or silver ore over his entire group of mines looked unpromising.
However, a new mineral, uranium, associated with the (nuclear) Cold War, enjoyed
a brief period of interest.
On May 26, 1955, Miller leased three of his (former Miller-Hanson) unpatented
mining claims to the Falcon Oil and Uranium Company of Grand Junction, Colorado.
The mining claims were the Brick, Bell, and Santa Clara. The fee was $1,000.
The Falcon Oil and Uranium Company drilled a few holes, located what they
thought might be a good ore body, and even accomplished a little production. But
after losing a trailer and a pickup truck in flooded washes and not achieving
the production value they expected, the Company stopped operations and gave up
their lease.
In March 1957, the Matador Oil Company of Los Angeles and the Maravilla Minerals
Corporation, a privately owned mining company, leased-to-buy the 19-patented
mines of the Consolidated Montana Mine Group and the Ruby mining camp. The
companies planned extensive diamond drilling and mine development in pursuit of
new lead and zinc ore at the Montana. They shipped a 125-ton concentrating mill
from Los Angles and began operations. Sporadic work continued until 1958 when
the two companies determined that they could not make sufficient profit there
and gave up their lease.
In October 1961, at age 72, Hugo Miller suffered a small stroke. Exhausted from
his years of mining work, Miller was ready to give up his Montana property and
his mining responsibilities. In November 1961, Miller concluded the sale of the
Montana mine (19-patented mining claims) and the Ruby mining camp to private
interests from Tucson.
From then on, as if his mining life’s blood was extinguished, Miller’s health
was poor. On March 15, 1963, at the age of 74, Hugo Miller died of pneumonia at
St. Joseph’s hospital in Nogales.
(Sources: Arizona Geological Survey Files; Private papers of Mr. and Mrs. Hugo
S. Miller; Nogales International; Arizona Daily Star; Tubac Historical Society;
University of Arizona Library Special Collections, AZ175)
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Next time: A Private Consortium Buys the Montana Mine and Ruby
