Unfortunately, no tin was ever taken from the mine. Some say it was too difficult to separate the tin from the various other minerals in the ore. Others say there wasn’t enough tin to bother with. Either way, after an investment of $1.5 million, tin mining operations ceased in 1906. After digging more than 1,000 feet of shafts and tunnels, it took only a month and a half of ore refining efforts to determine that the mine was a failure.
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That did not, however, keep the mine from being sold and re-sold to a series of hopeful owners, each with their own scheme for getting rich. For instance, one owner, Glenn S. Gunn, tried to extract mercury from the ore. None of these efforts proved enormously fruitful either.
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Assistant District Forester L. A. Barrett wrote in a 1912 report, "I have had personal knowledge of these claims for twenty years and know that the only money ever made from them has been secured through sale of stock and transfer to new owners."
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Eventually, the Santa Ana Tin Mine did produce at least one mineral treasure – a small sample of an extremely rare mineral called arcanite. It was not found in the ore however, but was embedded in a pine railroad tie in Tunnel #1.
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