The Tennessee Mine: Giant of the District
Near Chloride, Arizona
High in the hills above town stood the giant of the Chloride district, the Tennessee Mine. Together with its neighbor the Schuylkill, it formed the Tennessee Schuylkill complex, among the larger producers in the Wallapai mining district. The ore here was a complex tangle of sulfides, lead, zinc, and copper laced with secondary gold and silver, and getting it out and processed took serious industry.
The Tennessee worked for roughly half a century, and over those years it is credited with producing millions of dollars in gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc, a fortune in its day. The mine mattered so much that the railroad extended its tracks from the Chloride station right up to the Tennessee to carry ore down the mountain. Zinc and lead from these workings kept flowing into the nineteen forties, long after many smaller camps had gone quiet.
When metal prices finally collapsed and costs climbed, even the Tennessee could not survive, and its closure sealed the fate of the town below. The scarred hillsides, tailings, and old headframes you may glimpse up here are what remain of the engine that once drove Chloride, and that gave the town both its wealth and, in the end, its long decline.
