Project Description
Introduction
This project is in Cascade County, Western Montana, which resides on 32 patented mining claims. The claims contain numerous past-producing mines of silver, lead, zinc, copper and gold. Average ore grades produced during the early part of the 20th century averaged well over 20 opt in silver, with excellent base metal and gold credits. The various historic mines on these claims include the Lexington, Benton, Big Seven and other mines.
In the 1980s and 1990s, multimillion-ounce gold and silver exploration targets were postulated by geologists for Union 76-Molycorp. The Company intends to begin its exploration program by reopening the main tunnel of the Big Seven Mine, establishing underground drill stations and drilling to both the east and the west for the down-dip extensions of numerous vein systems. The Company will also focus on reprocessing numerous historic mine dumps, which contain significant amounts of recoverable base metals, silver and gold. The Company believes this dump clean-up will be highly supported by officials from the State of Montana.
Exploration Targets Postulated by Union 76-Molycorp
During the period of the mid-1980s Molycorp, a subsidiary of Union Oil Company, also known as Unocal, was pursuing base metal exploration in Montana targeting molybdenum targets. The work brought the Molycorp geologists to Neihart, Montana as there exists a substantial molybdenum deposit to the north of Neihart called the Big Ben Deposit, and the geologists were looking for evidence of porphyry style deposits in the historic Neihart District.
The Molycorp explorationists eventually concluded that gold and silver was a better target in the district than molybdenum and came up with the following three possible target scenarios for finding gold-silver mineralization in the Big Seven area:
- Historic high grade and underground vein deposit targets.
- Contact zones between the Precambrian rocks (gneiss & diorite) and the Neihart quartzite where substantial thicknesses of high-grade ore can be expected based on past mining records.
- A disseminated veinlet target in the quartzites is described as when the veins pass beneath the quartzite, and it is inferred that they would shatter and break the overlying quartzite passing upwards to form a large tonnage, low grade disseminated gold-silver deposit. This inferred geological hypothesis is backed by mine records which show drifts passing into the quartzite with 0.1 to 0.25 opt gold and 5 to 25 opt silver.
The USGS publication titled “Geology of the Little Belt Mountains, Montana,” by W.H. Weed, written in 1900, some eighty years earlier, also described these targets, and reinforced the postulations being made by the Molycorp geologists. The combination of scenarios 2 and 3 became a target of high interest to Molycorp as this target postulated an open pit reserve with mine-grade mineralization.
However, despite the strong recommendations of the geologists in charge on the ground to move ahead with the project, the upper management of Molycorp felt the gold-silver target strayed too far from the mission of searching for base metals with a focus on finding molybdenum. Thus, the detailed exploration plans of the geologists were not carried out and the property has remained idle for most of the years since that time.
Exploration Plans for Gold/Silver Bulk Tonnage Target
The Company intends to follow the lead of Molycorp geologists in exploring for the bulk minable target they described over 36 years ago. For starters, the Company will ensure that the land package contains the entirety of the target. To this end, approximately 25 unpatented claims have been staked to the south of the existing patented claims within the area of thicker sections of the quartzite.
During the 2021 field season, a three-man team conducted geological mapping at a scale of one inch to 500 feet, rock chip sampling and soil geochemistry. One line of Induced Polarization geophysics was also conducted to locate associated sulfide mineralization. Additional geophysics may be warranted to aid in identifying mineralization.
A first phase drilling program in 2022 would consist of a maximum total of 7,500 feet of drilling in 10 to 15 holes and additional land acquisitions will be done as warranted. The initial drilling is planned for 2022. Future work for 2023 and beyond would consist of additional follow-up drilling to complete target evaluation.