Friends of the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum

2010 Special Citation

The Friends of the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum (FAMMM) helps convey mineral knowledge to 50,000 children and adult visitors that visit the Arizona Mining & Mineral Museum in Phoenix each year. Members of FAMMM, along with other volunteers, are active in the construction of displays, preparation of teacher kits, and restoration of historic mining equipment to working condition. FAMMM has educated visitors about the importance of mining and minerals in their daily life.

FAMMM was incorporated in 2004 as a non-profit foundation. The organization consists of volunteers who obtain donations of materials, grants, and services of heavy hauling equipment.

Their accomplishments include moving and reconstructing the Boras head frame from Bisbee, moving and reconstructing an 1898 gold stamp mill from the Swallow Mine, enhancing the H & K Porter steam locomotive, installing a haul truck tire and shovel bucket, restoring a mucker from the Rover mine, and restoring a jaw crusher. The volunteers run this equipment at the two Family Days held annually, as well as monthly demonstrations.

FAMMM has an even wider influence through the 1,200 teacher kits that are distributed free to Arizona classroom teachers each year. These teacher kits contain 45 labeled rocks and minerals, a book on uses and how to identify rocks and minerals, posters, mining career information, and a CD of classroom activities. For several years the teacher kit booklets have been produced through grants obtained by FAMMM. The second most important part of the kit is the Teacher Pac CD. FAMMM purchased a CD/DVD burner to produce the digital materials at a fraction of the cost by burning and assembling the CDs in-house. FAMMM also obtains grants and administers the elementary school outreach program that volunteers take to schools outside of Maricopa County.

To explain modern copper mining to museum visitors, FAMMM obtained grants to create the Copper Gallery at the museum. FAMMM administered the construction of cases exhibiting minerals from Arizona copper mines, murals about Arizona copper mines, and kiosks for showing videos about modern mining.

Members of FAMMM and other volunteers donate over 10,000 hours each year to the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum. Their efforts at refurbishing the mineral display cases, crushing rocks for the teacher kits and wheelbarrow containing free rocks for children, building shelves and cleaning up the boneyard of totes full of rock samples, as well as weekly tasks of various maintenance activities, are well rewarded by the thrilling enthusiasm of the hundreds of children who visit the museum each day.

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