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Mines/Mexico

Zacatecas silver mines

Zacatecas silver mines, Mexico. Heritage site, underground, mining silver.

Why Zacatecas silver mines is famous

ICOMOS says the town was founded in 1546 after the very rich San Bernabe silver lode was found. By 1550 there were 34 mines working. Silver output peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries before Guanajuato overtook it.1,2

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Epithermal vein (Creede type)

Zacatecas silver mines today

Where silver is mined todayMining in Mexico

Where next

Mines

Rival ofValenciana Mine (Guanajuato)Zacatecas peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries before Guanajuato overtook it.1

Places

Located inZacatecasZacatecas silver mines sits at Zacatecas.1

Deposit types

An example ofEpithermal vein (Creede type)Zacatecas silver mines belongs to the epithermal vein family of deposits.3

Sources

  1. Historic centre of Zacatecas, evaluation No 676 UNESCO World Heritage Centre / ICOMOS advisory body evaluation
  2. Wikidata item Q139242 (Zacatecas city) Wikidata (CC0)
  3. 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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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Cerro Rico over Potosí by Jbmurray, CC BY-SA 4.0. 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).