P. Johnston, W & D. Lowell, J. (1961).

Geology and origin of mineralized breccia

pipes in Copper Basin, Arizona. Economic Geology. 56. 916-940.
10.2113/gsecongeo.56.5.916. The Copper Basin district, Yavapai County, contains a
"porphyry Cu" type Cu-Mo deposit in which the bulk of ore mineralization
appears to have been controlled by pipe structures. Mineralization is associated
with a composite stock of presumed Laramide
age which has intruded older Precambrian metamorphosed sediments and intrusive
rocks. The Laramide stock is thought to have
an elongated "beet" shape with a restricted orifice at depth. Its intrusive units
range in composition from diorite to aplite,
but mineralization appears to be most closely associated with quartz monzonite and
quartz monzonite porphyry units. Mineral
deposits of the district have a rough zonal arrangement with Cu-Mo mineralization
in the center surrounded by an aureole of
Pb-Zn-Ag occurrences. Mineralized breccia pipes are roughly cylindrical, near
vertical structures ranging in diameter from
50 to 600 ft. A composite pile is composed of a central core of heterogeneous,
rotated, angular to rounded rock fragments
surrounded by a zone of nonrotated crackle breccia. The fragments are cemented by
quartz and may be mineralized with pyrite,
chalcopyrite, and molybdenite. The pipes are thought to have been conduits through
which late magmatic fluids, collecting
near the restricted root of the stock, passed upward. An individual pipe was
initiated by passage of fluid upward along a
vertical line such as an intersection of faults or fractures. From this channel,
fluid worked into the adjacent fractured
rocks and corroded fragments that were eventually loosened and moved in the
conduit, gradually enlarging the pipe. Quartz
later precipitated, filling all of the open space and choking the conduit.
Successive flexures of the stock or recurrent movement
on regional faults fractured this quartz in some of the pipes, and later
hydrothermal solutions tended to follow these conduits,
both because of their location on deep-seated structures and because the fractured
quartz provided relatively high permeability.
Hydrothermal solutions, preceding and accompanying ore deposition, spread outward
from the pipes and formed overlapping aureoles
of alteration. Pyrite, chalcopyrite, and molybdenite were deposited along fracture
surfaces throughout a large area in Copper
Basin, but higher grade mineralization was generally confined to fractured pipe
structures.