An Insider’s Look At Active Placer & Lode Gold Mine: Part 3 - Quartz Veins

TVR Exploring
In this next video of our explore of this historic placer and lode underground gold mine, we start encountering more of the lode elements… There is, of course, still virgin ancient river channel underground at this mine that, if the numbers proved to be anything like the miners of the past encountered, would mean there is still a staggering amount of gold underground here. However, this mine also contains several large, high grade quartz veins and many small fissure veins. The adit at this mine was run for gravel, but miners are not too picky about where their gold comes from. So, when they encountered gold in the quartz veins, they did not complain. The description of the discovery of the veins is reported as follows: “…[the adit] driven for gravel encountered a quartz vein 35 feet wide on a contact between the slate and serpentine with perpendicular walls. Twenty feet next to the footwall rich in sulphurets and free gold. Sulphurets show galena, zinc, and iron pyrites assaying $1500 per ton. After drifting 100 feet on the vein no deterioration in the quality of the quartz is perceptible. The quartz vein does not show anywhere on the surface being entirely lava capped." As a reminder, that $1500 per ton was for prices in the 1800s. It would be considerably higher now! Also, to put that mention of the lava cap above into some context… The lava cap has a thickness of over 600 feet in some locations at this mine. That is a LOT of lava. Imagine the kind of eruption(s) that would have taken place to produce flows like that! So, to recap the geology you observed in these three videos: The adit initially cuts through serpentine, then encounters a fault contact with the lava, goes through the lava, enters a belt of amphibolite, re-enters the lava and again goes into the serpentine and amphibolite. We are wrapping up the underground portion of this mine with this video. In the next video, we’ll go into great detail showing you the buildings and equipment on the surface – everything you need to know to get a gold mine of your own up and running!