YAVAPAI ONYX MINING CORPORATION

YAVAPAI ONYX MINING CORPORATION. Beginning with a small group of employees on Rhomberg Avenue, the company, probably named for the source of their material, grew rapidly to employ eighty people in the manufacture of onyx gear shift balls and special order items for churches, lamp manufacturers, and furniture and cabinet producers. Officers in the company included Joseph A Kelly, president; J. H. Devaney, vice president; Joe Vincent Ryan, secretary; and George W. Heitkamp, geologist. (1)

The industry was widespread.

            Arizona onyx is fast gaining reputation in the East, and 
            the day is not far distant when most of the onyx used in 
            the United States will come from this territory.  The great 
            beds of this precious stone in Yavapai and Maricopa counties  
            alone, when sufficiently developed, will supply a greater 
            part of the demand.  Even now from two to five carloads are 
            shipped from the Yavapai beds, and arrangements are being 
            made to increase the output, and by the 5th of May, teams will 
            moving several tons a day from the Cave Creek mines.

            The Yavapai onyx beds, owned by W. O. O’Neil and partners, are 
            probably the most extensive mines of the kind known, being  
            almost a solid body  one mile by one mile and a half in extent.  
            At present about forty men are engaged in taking out the stone 
            that is being shipped to Chicago, New York, Cincinnati and other 
            cities, where it is worked into table-tops, etc.  Probably 
            the largest slab of onyx ever taken out in one piece was dug out 
            of the O’Neil ledge, it being 10 x 23 feet, and 26 inches thick.  
            The stone of the O’Neil ledge, it being 10 x 23 feet, and 26 inches 
            thick. The  stone  from  this  claim  is  very  fine  grain  and  
            takes a much higher polish than the celebrated onyx of Mexico,
            and it contains colors that were exhausted many years ago in the 
            Mexican mines.  Then, too, the mines of that country never turned 
            out pieces larger than five or six feet square.  So far as developed, 
            the Cave Creek onyx beds do not seem to be as large as the Yavapai 
            beds, though the stone is as fine, but even as they are, they will 
            produce large amounts and in blocks of very satisfactory size.  
            J. B. Dougherty, of New York, is doing a  great deal of development  
            work, and as soon as the road is completed,  he will put teams to  
            hauling  and loading it on to the cars at Phenix, (sic) for shipment 
            to New York. 

                        Phenix Gazette (sic) (2)

Archives in the Arizona State Library note that “more than 1 million pounds of onyx were shipped in 1922. The onyx was made into lamp stands, jewelry boxes, church alter rails, tabletops and other ornamental items. In 1927, seven automakers, including Ford, were using onyx found near Mayer, Arizona for decorative detailing in their cars.” (3)

In January, 1923 the company moved from its offices in the BANK AND INSURANCE BUILDING to 251 W. 6th Street. Only the front of the building was planned for use until some of the onyx from Mayer, Arizona arrived for cutting and polishing. Samples were placed in the windows for visitors to see. (4)

By 1926, the company employed sixty workers in Dubuque and twenty more in the onyx mines in Arizona. The company owned twenty-one patented mining claims covering four hundred acres in Yavapai County, the only commercially valuable deposit of onyx in the United States. In July 1926 it was one of a select few companies to participate in the Eucharistic Congress in Chicago where it exhibited such items as candle sticks, pedestals, a holy water font, and crucifixes made entirely of onyx.

The company moved to Dyersville in 1926 and announced a $75,000 plant expansion in Dyersville and at its Arizona properties. Despite the publicity and early hopes, the plant was closed during the fall of 1928. A company by the same name was operating in 2016. (5)

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Source:

1. "Plan to Establish Onyx Plant Here," Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, October 11, 1922, p. 12

2. "Chasing Arizona Onyx," Online: https://csmsgeologypost.blogspot.com/2015/03/chasing-arizona-onyx.html

3. Ibid.

4. "Mining Company Has New Offices," Telegraph Herald, January 17, 1923, p. 3

5. Online: http://www.mindat.org/maps.php?id=41730