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Mines/Mexico

Valenciana Mine (Guanajuato)

Valenciana Mine (Guanajuato), Mexico. Producing, underground, mining silver, gold since 1548.

Why Valenciana Mine (Guanajuato) is famous

Guanajuato silver was found in 1548. Financed by Obregon y Alcocer in the late 18th century, Valenciana then produced about a third of global annual silver. Mining ceased in 1816 in the independence war, the British reopened it 1868 to 1878, a cooperative worked it from 1939 and Great Panther acquired it in 2005. 2023 production at the Valenciana complex was 317,553 oz of silver and 3,879 oz of gold.1,2

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Epithermal vein (Creede type)

Valenciana Mine (Guanajuato) today

Where silver is mined todayWhere gold is mined todayMining in Mexico

Where next

Mines

An example ofCerro Rico de PotosiValenciana once made a third of the world's silver. Potosi had found its lode in 1545.1Same kind of depositComstock LodeValenciana made a third of the world's silver in the late 18th century. Comstock was found in 1859.1Rival ofZacatecas silver minesZacatecas peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries before Guanajuato overtook it.3

Places

Located inGuanajuatoValenciana Mine (Guanajuato) is about 3 km from Guanajuato.1Located inHistoric Town of Guanajuato and Adjacent MinesValenciana Mine (Guanajuato) is about 3 km from Historic Town of Guanajuato and Adjacent Mines.1

Deposit types

An example ofEpithermal vein (Creede type)Valenciana Mine (Guanajuato) belongs to the epithermal vein family of deposits.4

Sources

  1. NI 43-101 technical report, effective 31 December 2023 Guanajuato Silver Co (GSilver)
  2. Wikidata entity Q6016839
  3. Historic centre of Zacatecas, evaluation No 676 UNESCO World Heritage Centre / ICOMOS advisory body evaluation
  4. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Pictures: Potosi, Bolivia, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0); Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0).