Mine Name Poetry

Recently, a friend of mine from Tucson showed me how to use the USGS MRDS (Mineral Resource Data System). This might be old news to some people, but it's new and cool to me. It works in Google Earth and marks out every mine in production, every mine that ever produced and even every occurrence or claim. You can download the MRDS here.You need Google Earth, too. It works with every state.

Now I'm into tracking down old mines. We checked out a great one last weekend and I'll put it up here when I'm done editing the photos. But for now, back to MRDS. All the mines are named and the names of the mines are all very cool. I like to scroll around Arizona in Google Earth, highlighting mines, seeing what each mine produced and what each is named. The namers' creativity is sometimes striking for it's oddity, other times striking for its absence.

I decided to take the names and work them into sort of Haiku-like poems. Each line is the name of a mine, the titles are names of places near the mines featured in the poem. I'm only the editor or anthologist. I don't know who the authors are, but I hope they'd enjoy the poems:

I. Santa Ritas
Silver Spur,
Blue Jay-Good Friday,
Sweet Bye and Bye.

II. Northern Catalinas Part 1
Old Hat,
Dead Bull,
Halloween and Spook.

III. Northern Catalinas Part 2
Sueno Del Oro,
Madre Del Oro,
American Flag.

IV. Superstitions Part 1
Lazy Mule,
Happy Wheels,
Lost Dutchman,
Mystery Mountain.

V. Superstitions Part 2
Indian,
Yankee,
Bulldog.

VI. Tonto
First Chance,
Rainbow,
Devil's Chasm.

VII. Cleator
Golden Turkey,
Grey Goose,
French Lilly,
What-A-Pal.

VIII. Bisbee
Silver Bear,
Irish Mag,
Copper Queen.

IX. Prescott
Mormon Girl,
Hoot Owl,
Pine Grove.

X. Tucson
Little Mary,
Isabel,
Pure Gold,
Owl.