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Elder Creek Mine area

Past Producer in Lander county in Nevada, United States with commodities Gold, Arsenic, Mercury, Antimony
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Sections on this page
  1. Identification information
  2. Geographic coordinates
  3. Site location context
  4. Geographic areas
  5. Public Land Survey System information
  6. Commodities
  7. Materials information
  8. Alteration
  9. Mineral occurrence model information
  10. Host and associated rocks
  11. Nearby scientific data
  12. Geologic structures
  13. Ore body information
  14. Economic information about the deposit and operations
  15. Mining district
  16. Land status
  17. Ownership information
  18. Bibliographic references
  19. General comments
  20. Reporter information

Geologic information

Identification information

Deposit ID 10310325
MRDS ID RE00281
Record type Site
Current site name Elder Creek Mine area
Alternate or previous names Shoshone
Related records 10055211

Comments on the site identification

  • This property contains all pertinent material from earlier MRDS record #RE00281 plus additional material.

Geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinates: -116.85037, 40.30269 (WGS84)
Elevation 2290
Relative position The Elder Creek Mine is located approximately 24 miles southeast of the town of Battle Mountain.

Site location context

Political divisions (FIPS codes)

Lander(county)

Nevada(state)

United States(country)

North America(continent)

Land(continent)

USGS map quadrangles

Ferris Creek(quadrangle 1:24,000 scale)

Crescent Valley(quadrangle 1:100,000 scale)

Winnemucca(quadrangle 1:250,000 scale)

Hydrologic units (watersheds)

Middle Humboldt(hydrologic unit)

Humboldt(hydrologic accounting unit)

Black Rock Desert-Humboldt(hydrologic subregion)

Great Basin(hydrologic region)

Federal lands

Bureau of Land Management(Bureau of Land Management NV)

Bureau of Land Management NV BLM(Type of land area)

BLM(Federal land areas administered by BLM)

Geographic areas

Country State County
United States Nevada Lander

Public Land Survey System information

Meridian Township Range Section Fraction State
Mount Diablo 028N 045E 12 13 Nevada
Mount Diablo 028N 046E 07 18 Nevada

Comments on the location information

  • The Elder Creek Mine is located in the northern part of the Shoshone Mountains of central Nevada.

Commodities

Commodity Importance
Gold Primary
Arsenic Critical Tertiary
Mercury Tertiary
Antimony Critical Tertiary

Comments on the commodity information

  • Ore Materials: gold

Materials information

Materials Type of material
Gold Ore

Alteration

  • (Local) hydrothermal alteration, silicification

Mineral occurrence model information

Model code 173
USGS model code 26a.1
Deposit model name Sediment-hosted Au
Mark3 model number 17

Host and associated rocks

  • Host or associated Host
    Rock type Sedimentary Rock > Carbonate > Limestone
    Rock type qualifier silty
    Rock unit name Roberts Mountains Formation
    Stratigraphic age (youngest) Early Devonian
    Stratigraphic age (oldest) Wenlock

Nearby scientific data

(1) -116.85037, 40.30269
ListMap

Economic information

Geologic structures

Type of structure Regional
Structure description Roberts Mountains thrust fault

Ore body information

  • General form irregular

Comments on the geologic information

  • The Shoshone Range is dominantly underlain by Paleozoic strata made up of Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian rocks that occur as a complex stack of thrust slices in the upper plate of the Roberts Mountains thrust. Lower plate carbonate rocks are exposed as windows through upper plate both northwest and southeast of the Elder Creek property. Exposures on the property are of cherts, argillites, and quartzites of the Ordovician Valmy Formation. These have been thrust over Devonian carbonate rocks during the Mississippian Antler Orogeny. Both upper and lower plate rocks were then intruded by Tertiary dikes following high angle structures which feed into sills along thrust and bedding planes.

Economic information about the deposit and operations

Operation type Surface
Development status Past Producer
Commodity type Metallic
Deposit size Small
Significant Yes
Discovery year 1983
Discoverer MAPCO Minerals Corporation
Year of first production 1989
Year of last production 1990
Production years 1989-1990

Mining district

District name Bullion District

Land status

Ownership category BLM Administrative Area
Area name Battle Mountain Administrative District of the Bureau of Land Management

Ownership information

  • Type Owner
    Owner Mill City Gold Corp.
    Year 2006
  • Type Operator
    Owner Minterra Resource Corp.
    Year 2006

Comments on the workings information

  • Past production from small open pit; current drilling,

Comments on other economic factors

  • In 1989, the property contained a reported 91,500 ounces of gold. After a short period of production, in 1990 the property contained a reported 1.5 million tons of material grading 0.041 ounces of gold per ton for a total contained 61,500 ounces of gold.

Comments on development

  • The Elder Creek project was discovered in 1983 by MAPCO Minerals Corporation (MAPCO) during an intensive helicopter reconnaissance program. Subsequent follow-up work indicated significant gold mineralization related to several small exposures of an aplitic latite dike. Samples of gray quartzite in the vicinity of the dike were also very anomalous. On June 1, 1988, a joint venture was formed between NERCO and Alta Gold Company, which became the Alta-NERCO Joint Venture, to further explore the Elder Creek property and other properties within the Shoshone Range. The operator of the Elder Creek Project was
    Alta Gold. Alta Gold began leaching at the site in 1989 and operated continuously until January 4, 1991. In January 1991, Elder
    Creek Mine initiated permanent cessation of mining operations. However, operation of the leach pad and recovery of precious metals continued through 1992. On July 1, 1991, Alta Gold acquired NERCO?s interest in the Elder Creek Project becoming sole owner. Under Alta Gold ownership, seasonal leaching took place during the summers of 1991 and 1992.
    The Elder Creek property was subsequently acquired by Mill City Gold Corp., who optioned it to Minterra Resource Corp. which is now drilling the property (2006).
    Minterra's first test of that deep target was abandoned due to difficult drilling. A second hole was drilled to 1,860 feet before reaching the limit for the reverse circulation rig. The company intends to deepen that hole with a core rig.
    Two earlier holes in the area, one to the west and the other to the east, encountered the lower plate at 2,450 feet and 2,200 feet, respectively on the Elder Creek property.
    The recent Minterra hole found hydrothermal alteration such as would be expected proximal to a gold deposit in that setting. 2006 drilling program was designed to test the significance of that alteration. Minterra is planning to drill up to four additional holes in this first phase on the Elder Creek property.

Reference information

Bibliographic references

General comments

Subject category Comment text
Deposit The near surface resource at Elder Creek is a guide to and possibly indicative of a high-grade gold deposit in lower plate carbonate rock. The Elder Creek property has potential for high-grade gold along exposed structures where they intersect lower plate rocks at depth. Phase 1 drilling intersected the lower plate Roberts Mountains Formation at a depth of 2,174 feet in the core tail in hole EC-2. The Roberts Mountains Formation in EC-2 is a highly brecciated, thinly-bedded silty limestone with pervasive carbon veining, silicification, and decalcification. EC-2 intersected weakly anomalous gold (up to .101 ppm (grams/ton) gold) and anomalous trace elements (up to 508 ppm aresenic, 33 ppm antimony, 1.08 ppm mercury). These assay results are consistent with the alteration and mineralization halo expected around a sediment-hosted (Cortez Hills type) gold deposit.
Historic surface data gathered during the Phase 1 drilling program indicated that the part of the historic Elder Creek pit which was mined for higher gold grades is about 400 to 600 feet northeast of the Phase 1 drill site. Two drill holes are planned in the second phase program to test the lower plate rocks beneath this historic high-grade zone. Phase 2 drilling was scheduled for August 2006.

Reporter information

Type Date Name Affiliation Comment
Reporter 01-APR-2005 LaPointe, D.D. Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology
Editor 01-SEP-2007 Schruben, Paul G. U.S. Geological Survey Converted from S&A FileMaker format to Oracle. Edit checks on rocks, units, and ages with Geolex search, and other fields.

Beyond USGS

Supplemental information added by qvyshift.com. Not part of the original USGS MRDS record.

Maps centered on this site

Authoritative Nevada resources

These are landing pages for further research — the state agencies don't currently expose per-mine deep links.