Titanium Mine in the San Gabriel Mountains

The Iron Blossom Mine was a titanium producer in the western San Gabriel Mountains during the years 1927-1928. The ore, referred to as magnetite-ilmenite, titaniferous magnetite, or titanomagnetite contains interlocking grains of the iron ore magnetite and a titanium-iron oxide known as ilmenite. It occurs near the contacts of anorthosite and gabbro-diorite intrusions. The ore was in the form of lenses which measured 6 to 8 feet wide and from 30 to 50 feet in length.

Production reportedly began in early 1927 when ore was packed down to Soledad Canyon using mules. The operators, the Mineral Increment Co. shipped ore to H.D. Rankin’s “test plant” in El Segundo which refined the titanium ore. This was found to be a difficult process as the magnetite and ilmenite crystals were finely intergrown. The final product from this plant was not actual titanium metal, but titanium dioxide which is used as a white pigment for paints. Eventually, a road was built up to the mine and constructed on the property were 5 cottages, a garage, a 50-ton bin, and a No. 2 Wheeling crusher driven by a 25-h.p. gas engine. The ore was removed from surface cuts, short adits, and a 300 foot adit which cut several lenses of ore. Production would stop in 1928, amounting to 10,013 tons of ore valued at $150,195.

The Iron Blossom mine wasn’t the only titanium mine in the western San Gabriels, but it was the largest and most “successful”. I put the word successful in quotes because the mine didn’t shut down due to lack of ore, but because the high cost of refining the ore made the operation uneconomical. These titanium deposits occur all over the western San Gabriels and the streams are full of the eroded material. Anyone who's attempted to gold pan in the area will be familiar with the impressive amount of “black sand” you’ll find. Naturally, there were other attempts to profit off of this abundant resource.

The first attempt to mine the titaniferous magnetite deposits was in 1906 near Russ Siding on the Southern Pacific Railroad in Soledad Canyon. The owners were actually attempting to extract iron and did not realize the ore contained titanium. They built a furnace but the presence of the ilmenite made this a failure. During the 1920s and 1930s, DuPont’s Pigment Division performed extensive prospecting around the Sand Canyon, Pacoima Canyon, and Mill Creek areas of the San Gabriel Mountains to obtain titanium dioxide for paint. However, they determined that the deposits were uneconomical. In the 1940-50s a sand and gravel mine in Big Tujunga Canyon produced 2000 tons of magnetite-ilmenite and as a byproduct. A placer gold mine in Sand Canyon did the same. Even the sand at Redondo Beach contained titanium ore which washed down from the San Gabriels. There were brief attempts to concentrate these sands, but all of these operations did not have much longevity.

The techniques used to refine titanium have improved significantly over the years and there was yet another attempt to mine it in the San Gabriels. In the 1980s, The P.W. Gillibrand Co, which produced rock, sand, and gravel from Soledad Canyon for decades did extensive surveying and planned to strip mine the Iron Blossom Deposit and two others in the area. Gillibrand claimed that the San Gabriels contained one the largest deposits of commercial titanium ore in the US and that mining those deposits would greatly benefit many industries. Unfortunately for Gillibrand and fortunately for environmentalists, this plan was stopped by public pushback. There was another attempt to mine titanium in Sand Canyon during this time, but this was also thwarted. The San Gabriels certainly contain some of the largest titanium reserves in the United States, and if there is ever a strong need for it, these deposits may be mined in the future.

Some articles about the Gillibrand Mine can be found here: https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/gt8...