Memorial to Roland Blanchard 1891-1966

GEORGE TUNELLD epartment o f Geological Sciences, University o f California, Santa Barbara 93106

Mount Isa in the early 1940s. The late S. R. Carter, formerly Exploration M anager of a subsidiary of Mount Isa Mines Limited, stated that under Blanchard’s direction the Geological D epartm ent at Mount Isa set an example of day-to-day guidance for the min­ing operations tha t was later followed by other mining companies throughout Australia.

Roland Blanchard was born in Big Stone City, South Dakota, on December 12, 1891. His heritage was Swiss and German. Roland’s father, a largely self-educated man, was an itinerant Methodist minister. It was on one of these itineraries that he met and later m arried Elizabeth Gaulke. Roland’s childhood was spent in various small towns in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. When Roland was ten years old, the family was moved to a farming community in the Red River Valley of North Dakota. Here he attended a one-room country school for two years, passing the eighth-grade examinations when he was in the seventh grade. Roland was then sent to live with an uncle, who resided near the town in which Roland began his high school education. At that time he had his first job, that of “buckin’ straw.” Two boys, riding horses that were hitched to the two ends of a long plank, dragged away the straw as it piled up under the blower of a threshing machine. The pay was fifty cents a day, and with the money Roland earned, he bought his mother a meat grinder, an appliance which other women of the community had but which she lacked.

The following year the family moved to Thief River Falls, Minnesota, a small lum ber­ing town on the Red River. There Roland completed his high school education. Thief River Falls High School had three teachers, a mandolin club, and a football team.

Geological exploration for deposits of metalliferous ores and the application of geology to the development and exploitation of such deposits constituted the life work of Roland Blanchard, in the course of which he investigated many areas of the western United States, southern British Columbia, Mexico, Australia, and New Guinea. Comprehensive and detailed mapping, both surface and underground, was carried out by him at Bisbee, Arizona, in the 1920s, and his reports on this district are regarded as classics by geologists of this district and are still valid after forty years. Blanchard was the first Chief Geologist of Mount Isa Mines Limited, in Queensland, Australia, holding this position from 1931 until 1948. Together with one of the Queensland government geologists, S.R.L. Shepherd, he made a detailed surface and underground geological survey of the Mount Isa leases in the early 1930s, which has been the basis of the tremendous develop­ments there in the past twenty-five years. Subsequently, he planned the opening up of the copper ore bodies at

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Roland played a guitar in the mandolin club, on the football team he was the quarter­back, and with his teachers he did not always agree on all points. During Roland’s senior year in high school, his father died.

Roland had determined that the University o f Minnesota was the school where he wanted to continue his education. (Subsequently he told one o f his sisters that actually the deciding factor had been the fact that Minnesota had the strongest football team at that time.) To finance his first year at the university, he remained at home and obtained a job as a printer’s devil for the local weekly newspaper, at the same time working part- time in an attorney’s office. Then in 1909 he entered the University of Minnesota.

About this time the government was opening arid land in Montana for dry-farming. Anyone could obtain title to 320 acres of this land by living on the plot for three years and putting a certain number o f acres under cultivation each year. Roland interrupted his education to take up one of these claims and lived on it for the three required years. When not working on the land, he spent his time writing short stories and studying the geology o f the region, carrying out two major interests he had developed at the university. It appears that he really enjoyed those three years, for he was always a pioneer at heart. In this way he obtained the means to finish his university education, and during this period he had some time to think. After proving up his claim, he returned to the Univer­sity o f Minnesota. Under the influence of Professor W. H. Emmons, whom he greatly admired, he decided to make geology his life’s work. At the University of Minnesota his principal courses in geology were those given by Professors Emmons, F. F. Grout, and C. R. Stauffer. When the United States entered World War I, he volunteered for service and was accepted by the United States Army Air Corps, the only branch of the service from which he was not barred because o f his small stature. He served as Private First Class from September 18, 1917, to December 4, 1918, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and at Fort Monroe, Virginia. He had been assigned to active service and was about to be sent overseas when the armistice was signed. Blanchard then returned to the University of Minnesota, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1919, and from which he was graduated the same year.

From 1919 to 1922 Blanchard was engaged in geological scouting work at many mining properties in the southwestern United States, British Columbia, Alaska, and Mexico for the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company, the General Develop­ment Company, and the Holly Development Company, in the course of which he made examinations and valuations o f many mining properties. He investigated the geology and mining possibilities of the Silver Bell and Bagdad Districts in Arizona for the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company from 1922 to 1924. It was at Silver Bell that Blanchard began to learn how to discriminate leached cappings that overlay ore from leached cappings that overlay barren rock, although the reasons for the observed dif­ferences had not yet been discovered at that time. Blanchard also prepared a report on the geology and valuation of the Boleo Copper Mine, Santa Rosalia, Baja California, jointly with H. W. Morse, R. Marsh, Jr., and A. Locke during this period.

The following account o f Blanchard’s work at Bisbee, Arizona, has been contributed by Dr. Augustus Locke:

Blanchard moved to Bisbee in the middle 1920s. Development o f the ore bodies there had taken place over a period of 40 years, from the surface down the structural slope, by stopes, by penetration into walls and along leads, and now and then by forays into trackless blocks. These actions were controlled by management policy to which elements were added by bosses, engineers, staff geologists, and shrewd miners, all o f whom by long familiarity were at home in the workings. The equations of

MEMORIAL TO ROLAND BLANCHARD 3

probability had to include wide unknowns: a predominating footage in waste rock was integral to the game of which the strikingly successful outcome was a first-order yield o f metal. But now World War I depletion had called for outside help and brought in Blanchard.

It is o f interest that Blanchard had not been professionally seasoned by the day- to-day prophesy o f advances among intricate intrusions, thrusts and slumps; and by the lessons o f repeated defeats threatening to smother the occasional victories. More­over, o f conspicuously slight stature, he was in face-to-face competition with the burly, self-assured, competent veterans. In certain other ways, however, he had an advantage, he was exclusively dedicated to the problems o f ore position in the rock, which they were not. In addition, he was tireless in the pursuit and endowed with muscle and endurance to match. Even in the first week, when he offered vigorous opinions patently sharper than the evidence, his sincerity was so unmistakable that miners began to accept him.

Within a few months, the accumulating data, the cold realities o f operational result, and Blanchard’s overarching honesty served to bring his high-powered ideas under control. His reports became notably clear, specific, and convincing. The study, which included four other geologists, lasted two years and yielded no soaring achieve­ments in discovery. One old miner in friendly extenuation explained, “You know, we did something of a job here before you fellows came. And another thing: your geologist may spot the trap, but he can’t put the stuff in it.” For Blanchard, the result was that these two years carried him a long distance toward the balance between vigor and judgment which served him so well in his long, later, productive career.In 1928 Blanchard was engaged in geological work for the Consolidated Coppermines

Corporation at Ely, Nevada, in the course of which he discovered ore-localizing faults with vertical displacements o f more than 5,000 feet that had not been recognized previously.

In 1929 Blanchard was in charge o f a diamond-drilling program for the American Smelting and Refining Company at Gold Gulch, New Mexico. He also spent part o f his time during this year examining various properties in Arizona and New Mexico for Asarco. Julius Kruttschnitt, who was then General Manager o f Asarco’s Exploration and Mine Operation Division, stated in a letter to Professor Tunell dated October 7, 1968, that:

One incident in my long association with [Blanchard] might be o f interest to you. It happened in Arizona when Blanchard joined the staff of the Southwest Exploration and Mining Division o f the American Smelting and Refining Company, o f which I happened to be Manager. We had recently completed a drilling campaign on a disseminated copper deposit and had determined the extent of economic mineraliza- zation, the average grade and volume. Knowing Blanchard’s intense interest in out­crop interpretation, I asked him to go over this area and estimate its extent and, if possible, the grade o f ore to be expected. I did not show him our drilling records or estimates o f grade and tonnage. He went over the ground very carefully and produced a map showing the area which he considered represented economic mineralization as well as an estimate o f the percent of copper to be expected. When his maps and figures were superimposed on our records, they revealed a startling closeness between his results and ours.During the years from 1923 to 1929, much had been learned through the field studies

of Locke, Morse, Blanchard, Boswell, and Tunell and the chemical investigations of Morse, Boswell, Posnjak, and Tunell concerning the nature o f the oxidation products derived from various sulfide minerals and mixtures o f sulfide minerals in gangues of various kinds. Blanchard’s successful interpretation of the leached outcrops in the

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instance related by Kruttschnitt was made possible by the accumulated knowledge acquired by these groups o f investigators.

In 1929 Blanchard was offered a position by Mining Trust Limited, London, to examine some lead-zinc deposits at Lawn Hills in Northern Queensland, Australia. He accepted this offer and arrived at Lawn Hills in December 1929, where he was in charge of the geological investigation and diamond-drilling program at the Lawn Hills Conces­sion until the venture was terminated because of disappointing results.

Toward the end of 1930 Blanchard was sent to New Guinea by the Mining Trust Limited to report upon the properties of New Guinea Goldfields Limited.

At the conclusion of this work in New Guinea in 1931 he became Chief Geologist of Mount Isa Mines Limited, a subsidiary of Mining Trust Limited in Queensland, Australia. He organized Mount Isa's geological department, which played a vital part in the com­pany’s exploration and ore-development programs, and he made important contributions to the knowledge o f the regional geology and structural features o f the Mount Isa area and of the genesis of the Mount Isa ore deposits. Blanchard approached the problem of unraveling the geology o f this area with a vigor and determination that was characteristic of him. Neither the climate nor the problem of difficult access to numerous places deterred him from making the most painstaking field observations in great detail.

Blanchard recognized that the lead-zinc ores were layered in a sequence of finely bedded shales that had been complexly folded and faulted. In spite o f the structural complexity, he was determined to work out a stratigraphic column for the whole sedi­mentary sequence. Although it took some years to complete, this work was most success­ful and was of great practical use in the search for ore. Blanchard was able to demon­strate that the several known ore bodies occupied different sequences of the stratigraphic column, that certain layers of shale were more susceptible to mineralization than others, and that a particular group of beds was more likely to be mineralized where the beds were traversed by zones of folding. He used this invaluable information in directing diamond-drilling campaigns in successful searches for ore extensions at Mount Isa.

Blanchard also recognized that the base-metal mineralization had occurred as a series of separate events: the earlier finer grained mineralization was later breached and inter­layered with ore minerals of varying ratio of composition.

Near the surface, the Mount Isa silver-lead ore bodies were very regular in dip and appeared to have more the stratigraphic character of a coal seam than of a metalliferous deposit. Developments in depth soon changed this concept, and it was found that pre-ore faulting and folding were important factors in ore control and that faulting in particular had an important influence on grade o f ore. These structural problems were much more complex than had been at first assumed.

Blanchard’s detailed geological work in the mine allowed him to evaluate the structural controls of the silver-lead-zinc deposition. No geological fact-finding work could have been done with greater care or accuracy. His mapping of the ore limits was actually so accurate that the ring-drilling for sublevel stoping was designed on his geological maps. The length and direction o f each blasthole were calculated in the engineering office and there was very little room for error. The main ore body contained a one-foot band of very high grade ore close to the hanging wall and next to this, a one-foot band o f massive pyrite. In extraction it was necessary to mine the ore and leave the pyrite as a strong hanging wall o f the stope; otherwise there would have been excessive dilution and danger of collapse of the friable country rock beyond. Because the blasthole drilling was com­pleted weeks or even months before the ore was broken, there was no way o f altering the original pattern. The success of this mining method depended to a great extent on the accuracy o f the geological mapping.

MEMORIAL TO ROLAND BLANCHARD 5

S.R.L. Shepherd has stated that Blanchard’s most important contribution to geology in Australia was his pioneering work o f detailed and accurate geological control o f mining operations. Blanchard was fortunate in arriving at Mount Isa just before large- scale production commenced, and so he was able to examine the ore bodies from the original oxidized outcrops down to the primary zone while extraction was in progress and before the evidence was lost in mining. Shepherd stated that so far as he was aware, Mount Isa was the first mine o f any importance in Australia to establish a permanent geological department and to employ a full-time geologist. Under Blanchard’s direction it became the practice at Mount Isa for the examining geologist to map every face in the mine after each advance and to make a preliminary estimate o f the ore grade at the same time. S. R. Carter, who succeeded Blanchard as Chief Geologist at Mount Isa, has stated that Blanchard’s detailed maps o f both the underground and surface exposures have formed the base for all the mapping carried out at Mount Isa since Roland left Australia.

Blanchard’s several papers on the geology o f the Mount Isa deposits are listed in the bibliography at the end o f this memorial. Perhaps the most important o f these is his joint effort with Graham Hall entitled “Rock Deformation and Mineralization at Mount Isa.”

During the years 1936 and 1937 Blanchard spent much o f his time examining gold prospects in various parts o f Australia for his company. Probably his most important recommendation outside Mount Isa was the Big Bell mine in Western Australia. This old borderline mine had been examined and rejected by many geologists. However, Blanchard’s favorable report led to its reopening by Mount Isa Mines Limited, through one o f its associated companies. Although it did not have a very long life, it proved very profitable for the company at a time when mining was not very profitable in most places.

As a result o f his long experience in the investigation o f leached outcrops, Blanchard succeeded in correctly interpreting the significance of the large body of hematite- specularite that in part lay above the rich chalcocite ore-body at Mount Oxide, Queens­land, Australia. Among the interpretations o f this iron oxide mass offered by engineers and geologists who previously had inspected the deposit was the idea that it was the oxidized residual o f a medium- to low-grade primary pyrite-copper sulfide mass from which the adjoining chalcocite ore-shoot had been derived by leaching and supergene enrichment. However, in 1938 Blanchard observed that the hematite-specularite body exhibited none o f the distinguishing features that elsewhere characterize gossans of sulfide derivation, except that it in part overlay, as a hanging wall, the known high-grade secondary copper ore-shoot. However, rather than being composed of, or containing important amounts of, cellular or botryoidal gossanous products or denser, more siliceous limonitic jasper with shrinkage cracks, which had been observed to be the dominant oxidation products o f sulfide masses in other localities, the hematite and specularite occurred mainly in massive form, as grain-for-grain replacements o f the sandy and clayey particles o f the beds that overlay the copper ore-shoot. In brief, Blanchard was able to prove that the hematite-specularite mass was actually a primary deposit and not a gossan.

Blanchard continued his work at Mount Isa throughout the years of World War II, but he suffered a coronary occlusion there in June 1945, and returned to the United States to recuperate. By 1947 he had largely recovered, and then he spent some time in the field in the southwestern United States with Kenyon Richard and J. H. Courtright of the American Smelting and Refining Company, instructing them in the technique of leached outcrop interpretation in the development of which he had had so large a part.

In 1948 Blanchard was asked to return to Mount Isa in order that Mount Isa Mines Limited might have further benefit o f his extensive geological knowledge o f the com­

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pany’s properties and surrounding areas. In the same year, however, shortly after he returned to M ount Isa, Blanchard was stricken by a severe cerebral hemorrhage, which largely paralyzed his right arm and for a time rendered him unable to speak. Since further work in the mines was out o f the question for Roland, he returned to the United States for the last time in 1949, accom panied by h ii sister, Mrs. M. R. Fried. After several months o f convalescence in the Birmingham Veteran's Hospital in Van Nuys, California, and the Veteran’s Adm inistration Hospital in Long Beach, California, he regained his speech and learned to write with his left hand. For the remainder o f his life he occupied a small apartment in an establishm ent for retired persons at Sierra Madre, California, in the pleasant surroundings o f an orange grove. Roland’s principal occupation in Sierra Madre was the revision and com pletion o f the manuscript o f his book on leached outcrops. His retirement years gave him the opportunity to exam ine the mass o f data accum ulated during his earlier research, and with characteristic determ ina­tion he began to set down on paper not only descriptions o f all the products o f leaching and oxidation that he had encountered, but also explanations o f the leaching and oxida­tion processes that had produced these products. Blanchard’s manuscript, com pleted in 1960, was brought to the attention o f Vernon E. Scheid, Director o f the Nevada Bureau o f M ines, and in May of that year it was accepted for publication by the Bureau.

Editorial work continued slowly during the next several years as Blanchard approved suggested minor restructuring o f the manuscript. His heart had gradually becom e weaker following the cerebral hemorrhage in 1948, and when about Christmas 1965 revision of the manuscript was essentially complete, he contracted an acute illness and passed away on January 15, 1966.

Final checking o f the manuscript was carried out by Ira A. Lutsey, Technical Editor o f the Bureau, and myself in close collaboration, and the book was published in 1968 under the title “ Interpretation o f Leached Outcrops" as Bulletin 66 o f the Nevada Bureau o f M ines. Blanchard’s most important contribution to the interpretation of leached outcrops in terms o f the ore and gangue minerals in the unoxidized zone below was his determination o f the detailed structures—cellular boxworks and cellular sponges o f particular kinds, flaky crusts, “granular lim onite,” “fluffy lim onite,” “relief lim onite,” radiating fibrous crusts, “arborescent lim onite,” partially sintered crusts, botryoidal crusts, “columnar lim onite,” surface coalescences, desert varnish— derived from the various ore and gangue minerals and their mixtures. A unique feature o f Blanchard's book is an extensive series o f excellent color photographs o f sulfide and other ore and gangue minerals, each with an accompanying color photograph o f the leached product derived from it. It is unfortunate that Blanchard did not live to see his book in print. It is the hope o f the members o f the staff o f the Nevada Bureau of Mines and o f Professor Tunell that it will serve as Blanchard’s most permanent monument among the geologi­cal profession.

Blanchard was a Fellow o f the Geological Society o f America. He was a Life Member o f the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy; the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society o f South Africa (and its successor the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy); the Society of Economic Geologists; and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Also he was a member o f the American Institute o f Mining, M etallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers; the Institution o f Mining and Metallurgy; the American Chemical Society; the American Association for the Advancement o f Science; the Association o f Professional Engineers o f British Columbia; and the M ining, G eologi­cal and Metallurgical Institute o f India. In 1949 Blanchard served as Regional Vice- President for Australia o f the Society o f Economic Geologists. In 1939 Blanchard

MEMORIAL TO ROLAND BLANCHARD 7

received the Gold Medal o f the Chemical, Metallurgical and Mining Society o f South Africa for his paper entitled “Interpretation of Leached Outcrops,” which briefly sum­marized the technique o f leached outcrop interpretation as it existed at that time, and which was, in a sense, a forerunner o f the later comprehensive volume of the same title.

Roland Blanchard is survived by his two sisters, Mrs. Myrtle R. Fried and Mrs. Clara R. Leslie.

Roland Blanchard’s entire professional life was devoted to the systematic application of geologic principles in the search for the ore deposits upon which our modern industrial society is so vitally dependent. That he succeeded well in this task is shown by the wide acceptance of his findings regarding the manifestations and products o f the sulfide leaching process in nature, and by the establishment o f permanent geological depart­ments at many large mines, once the great value o f day-to-day geological observation during actual mining operations had been clearly demonstrated. His friends will remem­ber him as a man o f great integrity and persistent determination, who was generous to a fault with his keen analytical ability applied to the problems of others.

I am very grateful to Mrs. M. R. Fried, Blanchard's sister, for providing the account of his boyhood and student years. I wish to thank Augustus Locke for writing the state­ment concerning Blanchard’s work at Bisbee. The late E. H. Wisser also contributed information about Roland's accomplishments at Bisbee and wrote of his personal appreciation o f Roland as a mining geologist and as a man. I am very greatly indebted to Julius Kruttschnitt, Blanchard’s long-time friend, and to Graham Hall and S. R. Leonard Shepherd, former associates of Blanchard in Australia, for their first-hand statements of Blanchard's achievements in mining and exploration geology in Australia, which have been used extensively in the preparation of this memorial. Finally I wish to thank Ira A. Lutsey, Technical Editor o f the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology for reviewing the entire manuscript and making numerous editorial improvements in it.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF R O LA N D BLANCH ARD1922 The Jervis Inlot region, British Columbia: Pacific Mining Jour., v. 1, no. 3, p. 67-69 .1925 (and Boswell, P. E.) Notes on the oxidation products derived from chalcopyrite: Econ.

Geology, v. 20, p. 613-638.1927 (and Boswell, P. E.) O xidation products derived from sphalerite and galena: Econ. Geology,

v. 22, p. 419-453 .1928 (and Boswell, P. E.) Status o fleached outcrops investigation: Eng. and Mining Jour.,

v. 125, no. 7, p. 280-285 ; and no. 9, p. 373-377.1929 (and Boswell, P. E.) Cellular structure in lim onite: Econ. Geology, v. 24, p. 791-796.1930 (and Boswell, P. E.) Limonite types derived from bornitc and te trahedrite: Econ. Geology,

v. 25, p. 557-580.1931 Use o f ore guides: ling, and Mining Jour., v. 131, no. 4, p. 173-175.1933 Chemical migration 1. Post-mine phenom ena in New Guinea: Eng. and Mining Jour.,

v. 134, no. 9, p. 365-368.-------Chemical m igration 2. Post-mine redistribution o f gold and silver in New Guinea: ling.

and Mining Jour., v. 134, no. 10, p. 425-428.1934 (and Boswell, P. E.) Additional lim onite types of galena and sphalerite derivation: Econ.

Geology, v. 29, p. 671-690.1935 (and Boswell, P. E.) “ L im onite” o f m olybdenite derivation: Econ. Geology, v. 30, p. 313-319.1937 (and Hall, Graham) Mount Isa ore deposition: Econ. Geology, v. 32, p. 1042-1057.1938 Paragcncsis o f pyrrhotite : Econ. Geology, v. 33, p. 218-225.1939 In terpretation o fleached outcrops: Chem., Metallurgical and Mining Soc. South Africa

Jour., v. 39, p. 344-372.----- Significance o f the iron oxide outcrop at Mount Oxide, Queensland: Australasian Inst.

Mining and Metallurgy Proc., no. 114, p. 21-50.1942 (and G arretty , M. D.) Post-mine leaching o f galena and m arm atite at Broken Hill: Econ.

Geology, v. 37, p. 365-407.-------Leached derivatives of arsenopyrite and chrom ite: Picon. Geology, v. 37, p. 596-626 .------- (and Hall, Graham) Rock deform ation and m ineralization at Mount Isa: Australasian

Inst. Mining and Metallurgy Proc., no. 125, p. 1-60.------- (and G arretty , M. D.) Post-mine leaching o f galena and m arm atite at Broken Hill:

Australasian Inst. Mining and Metallurgy Proc., no. 127, p. 149-170......... Mount Isa ore geology, in Newhouse, W. H., ed., Ore deposits as related to structural

features: Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press; London, Oxford Univ. Press, p. 148-154.1943 The alleged mineral zoning at Mount Isa: Mining Technology, v. 7, November, AIME Tech.

Pub. 1652, p. 1-27.The copper deposits of Australia: Australasian Inst. Mining and Metallurgy Proc., no. 131 —132, p. 215-218 .

1944 Chemical and mineralogical com position of tw enty typical “ lim onites” : Am. Mineralogist, v. 29, p. 111-114.

------- A unique topographic expression: Am. Jour. Sci., v. 242, p. 354-360.------- Derivatives o f chrom ite: Econ. Geology, v. 39, p. 448.-------Leached outcrops [Review] : Econ. Geology, v. 39, p. 526 -528 .1947 Detailed studies o f zoning in ore districts: Econ. Geology, v. 42 , p. 543-545.------- Some pipe deposits o f eastern Australia: Econ. Geology, v. 42, p. 265-304 .1968 In terpretation o fleached outcrops: Reno, Nevada Bur. Mines Bull. 66, 196 p.