Oxbow & Silver Butte Mines

The Oxbow and Silver Butte mines sit about 9 miles southwest of Payson, Arizona, in the Mazatzal Mountains on the east slope near North Peak, inside the Green Valley (Payson) Mining District [1][2]. This is Tonto National Forest ground, and it's a real, documented copper-silver district — the Oxbow was discovered in 1875 and produced gold, lead, molybdenum, and silver alongside a genuinely interesting secondary mineral suite: dioptase, cuprodescloizite, wulfenite, chrysocolla, malachite, and fluorite [1]. Silver Butte (also called the Collom property) worked copper-silver-lead-gold ore from the same general slope [2]. Both are old, mostly worked-out underground operations rather than active mines, but the district still has roughly 185 active claims on file near Payson [3], so don't assume any specific dump or working here is open ground — verify claim status before you dig.

Both mines are in the Mazatzal Mountains, Gila County, roughly 9-9.75 miles southwest of Payson off the Tonto National Forest road network, at an elevation around 4,400 ft [1][2]. UNVERIFIED: no specific trailhead, forest road number, or driving directions were confirmed — this is backcountry National Forest terrain, and a Tonto NF ranger district map or GPS navigation to the coordinates is recommended over turn-by-turn directions.

General Tonto National Forest rule: surface collecting of rock and mineral specimens for personal, non-commercial use is allowed without a permit, but digging with hand tools or mechanized equipment requires contacting the Forest Service first [4]. At an old mine site like this, that typically means picking through existing waste-rock dumps rather than digging into intact ground or entering old workings — old shafts and adits here are unmaintained and dangerous; do not enter them.

Land manager is Tonto National Forest (USFS) for the surrounding ground, but the mine sites themselves may sit on patented or unpatented mining claims that are privately held even though they're inside National Forest boundaries — the Payson area has roughly 185 active claims on file [3]. UNVERIFIED which, if any, claims currently cover the Oxbow or Silver Butte workings specifically. Confirm current claim status before collecting, respect any posted claim markers, and stick to surface collecting under the general Tonto NF personal-use rule [4] unless you've separately confirmed you have permission to dig.