Santa Teresa district contains approximately thirty gold deposits. Phelps Dodge exploration personnel first visited the Amelia mine in May 1984. They were alerted to the property when a local prospector began making periodic shipments of silica flux, grading 13.4g Au/t, to the Phelps Dodge smelter in Douglas, Arizona.

At the time of the property examination, local miners were operating small mines at Amelia, Carmen, and Maribel. Ore was shipped to smelters in Mexico (Cananea

and Sonora) and the United States (Douglas, Arizona) as gold-bearing silica flux. Approximately 23,000 tonnes averaging 13.4g Au/t were shipped from the Amelia mine to the Douglas smelter and about 5,000 tonnes averaging 8g Au/t were shipped from the Maribel mine. Phelps Dodge (1988) reported that both mining operations later switched to heap leaching and on-site recovery of gold.

The Gold that have been found in Santa Teresa district could be a leakage from a big gold centre all that small amount of gold that are spread out must (my opinion) come from somewhere deeper gold that contains a lot of gold in size of 10-15gAu/t that have not been discovered at present time and I sure hope Animas find it.