$OODH - ORION DHC, Inc JV with Bayou Mining, Inc :

$OODH - ORION DHC, Inc JV with Bayou Mining, Inc : http://oriondhc.com/news-information/patent-n...formation/

AuVek's mining in JV with Bayou Mining is an area of approximately 6000 acres on the extreme western side of the Black Mountains, San Francisco Gold Trend /Tom Reed system. Our mine is in the top 1% of largest mines in America.

Here's a nice Article about our Mining region:
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Gold in the San Francisco District Oatman, Mohave County, Arizona

by W. Dan Hausel (Geologist)

Last year, my wife and I drove to Oatman, Arizona to collect information for a book I’m currently writing. While in the area we met fellow Wyomingites and rock hounds Pete and Sally, and spent time together before Sharon and I headed off to the hills to look at some spectacular geology.

Oatman is absolutely fantastic if you’re into mining and gold prospecting. The town lies near the center of what is known as the San Francisco district and has a plethora of western mining architecture and history, making it a must for tourists and prospectors alike. It is surrounded by inactive and abandoned gold mines: one of the richest ore bodies in the district (Tip Top ore shoot) was mined under the town. The San Francisco district lies along the western flank of the Black Mountains of Mohave County in extreme western Arizona. The Black Mountains also enclose the Virginia, Pilgrim and Union Pass (Katherine) districts.

Union Pass to the northwest produced 128,000 ounces of gold and 313,000 ounces of silver from 1865 to 1942. The Virginia district to the north yielded 17,800 ounces of gold and 17,700 ounces of silver, with some copper and lead from 1907 to 1955. The Pilgrim district to the north produced 48,000 ounces of gold and 72,000 ounces of silver from 1929 to 1945, while the San Francisco (Oatman) district itself contributed 2.2 million ounces of gold and 800,000 ounces of silver. The latter totals will increase over the next few years as ore is recovered from two current active mines: Gold Road and Moss.

The Black Mountains form a low-lying desert range 100 miles long by 20 miles wide that parallels the Colorado River to the west. The highest peaks in the range reach heights of only 5,000 feet: past temperature extremes at nearby Bullhead City and Needles to the west (600 feet elevation) reported a record low of 23°F and record high of 126°F with average annual precipitation of 7 inches. Kingman (3,300 feet above sea level) to the northeast reported temperature extremes of 6°F and 111°F with annual precipitation of 10 inches. Oatman (2,000 feet elevation) lies in the center of the Black Mountains and has annual precipitation of only 6.4 inches compared to a national average of 38.7 inches. In this hot, dry desert, detrital gold may be found near many lodes, but water is as difficult to find as an honest Congressman. In other words, there is no water to speak of.

By accessing either Flash Earth or Google Earth and searching for “Oatman Arizona,” bleached mine tailings will be seen both north and south of Oatman. These were part of the United Eastern (north) and Ben Harrison (south) mine operations along the northwest-striking Tom Reed vein. While viewing aerial photography around Oatman, many mines, prospects, gopher holes, veins, fractures, lineaments and faults along with some clay alteration will be visible. Try to count all of the mines and prospects in the region before going cross-eyed. I counted 85 mines and prospects before I gave up, and this didn’t even include veins, trenches and countless gopher holes.

The majority of the lodes in the district are linear, fracture-filling veins in faults traceable on the surface for several hundred to a few thousand feet. Each vein typically has several prospect pits, trenches and one or more mines. The Pioneer vein (35°1’6”N 114°24’27”W) for example, shows a distinct northwesterly-trending, 4,600-foot long vein (with vein splits) that was prospected by trenches and some mine shafts. The veins all have trace gold and silver along much of their length with periodic secondary enriched zones. It is the enriched zones (ore shoots) that are sought by prospectors presently, as well as in the past.

Ore shoots form by a variety of processes. While mapping South Pass, Wyoming in the 1980s, I followed 16 miles of intensely folded and periodically offset mineralized shear zones with stringers of quartz containing weakly anomalous gold along the entire length with periodic ore shoots enriched 100 to 1,000 times. I was able to find evidence these enriched shoots were structurally controlled by steeply plunging tight to isoclinal folds that plunged down to depths of nearly 1,000 feet and likely continued much deeper. In other districts, ore shoots have been shown to occur at vein intersections, in breccia pipes, faults, etc. Still in other regions, ore shoots were localized by reaction of hot mineralizing fluids with reactive wall rocks.

Another process by which ore shoots were developed in the San Francisco district is known as supergene enrichment. In this process, poorly mineralized veins were enriched by redistribution of the metal content. This is a near surface phenomenon requiring meteoric water and chemical weathering to oxidize primary (hypogene) ore. Descending meteoric waters can dissolve some gold and transport the fluid through vein fractures until the gold re-precipitates at depth. Gold dissolution likely was a result by dissolved salts in meteoric water reacting with manganese oxides during weathering. (Manganese oxides coat large parts of the veins in the district.) Gold then precipitated at depth when the meteoric water reacted with pyrite, carbonate, and/or groundwater. The supergene enrichment in such veins is evident by dramatic changes in ore grades at depth and by distinct differences of the gold-silver ratios of the precious metal in secondary supergene enriched zones compared to the primary hypogene ore.

Some of the ore shoots formed near the surface, while others were found as “blind shoots” (those that do not appear to outcrop) hidden at depth. Reported ore grades suggest some shoots averaged 0.58 opt Au and 0.17 opt Ag.

The veins are described as sulfide-poor veins with bands of andularia (low temperature variety of potassium feldspar), quartz and calcite. Some contain crustiform chalcedonic quartz banded with calcite. Placer gold is limited due to a lack of perennial streams. Much of the following information was compiled from government and consulting reports with a little interpretation by the author.

Mining History

Gold was sought in the Black Mountains in 1863 after local Indians showed samples of gold-bearing quartz to John Moss, an army officer stationed at nearby Fort Mohave. These samples were reportedly taken from an exposed vein in the northwestern portion of the district, which later became known as the Moss vein (35°5’52”N; 114°26’40”W).

About 12,000 ounces of gold were mined from the vein in the following year (1864) during the Civil War. A camp named Silver City (35°4’20”N; 114°25’28”W) was established about one and a half miles south of the Moss vein on Silver Creek and a mill was designed to use water from a spring in an otherwise dry drainage. A second mill was later constructed at Hardyville (renamed Bullhead City) on the Colorado River seven miles to the northwest. In 1866, war broke out between the gold prospectors and Hualpai Indians resulting in termination of mining operations. Little prospecting took place over the next few decades until the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1900, another mineralized vein was discovered south of the Moss vein and named the Gold Road vein (35°2’26”N; 114°22’21”W). In the following year, gold was found in another vein further south at what became known as the Tom Reed (35°1’5”N; 114°22’21”W). Following this discovery, a town known as Vivian was established in 1902.

A sample from the Gold Road sparked a rush when a prospector collected vein material from an ore shoot that assayed 40 ounces of gold to the ton! In 1906, rich ore was intersected in the Tip Top and Ben Harrison (35°1’23”N; 114°22’51”W) ore shoots on the Tom Reed vein; and in 1908, the town of Vivian changed its name to Oatman. Reports suggest Oatman grew to 10,000 prior to declining to a few hundred residents by the mid-1920s.

The lode deposits are epithermal veins that were precipitated from hot hydrothermal fluids and hot springs rich in silica and carbonate. Precipitation of silica resulted in portions of veins forming resistant, hard outcrops. Elsewhere, permeable fractures were flooded by soft carbonate (calcite) and rapid erosion of these produced linear depressions often buried by adjacent rock slump.

The veins were prospected for rich ore shoots. A group of shoots discovered along the Tom Reed vein included the Big Jim, Aztec and United Eastern ore bodies. A hidden shoot (Tip Top) yielded 580,000 ounces of gold. This shoot was mined under the town of Oatman until exhausted in 1924. Gold prices prior to 1924 were under $21 per ounce which suggests any unmined, low-grade gold in this “exhausted” shoot might be recoverable at today’s gold prices. The discovery of rich “blind deposits” in the district suggests similar hidden ore bodies are likely to occur elsewhere.

Over the years, a group of mines periodically operated and closed until all gold mines were closed by the War Minerals Board in 1942. Many of these properties in the West were making a profit at $33.85/ounce. Some of these mines reopened after the war, but many did not.

Some veins, such as the upper levels of the Gold Road, are simple tabular bodies with sharp wallrock contacts, but most consist of stringer gold-quartz-calcite ore that cut blocks of silicified latite. Other veins consist entirely of reticulating stringer veins that traverse the country rock. This latter type is typical of portions of the Gold Dust vein (35°0’49”N; 114°23’35”W). When stringer veins are sufficiently abundant, the country rock might be minable if gold contents of the stringers are sufficient high. Compound veins with two or more veins of solid quartz and calcite separated by country rock are common.

Some ore shoots had good lengths and widths such as the Big Jim-Aztec (35°1’9”N; 114°22’21”W) shoot which had a maximum width of 35 feet. Ore bodies at the Black Eagle and Telluride mines were narrow on the Tom Reed vein, but the principal ore body on the Tom Reed vein mined at the United Eastern shaft had a width of 48 feet.

Gold and silver content decreased at depth. At the United Eastern, the grade dropped from >1 ounce per ton to <0.5 ounce per ton in gold at 800 feet. The Big Jim-Gray Eagle ore shoot averaged 0.95 opt Au above the 600-foot-level but decreased to <0.3 opt Au below this level. Similar abrupt changes were noted elsewhere. Ore bodies at the United Eastern, Tip Top and Ben Harrison all ended at nearly the same depth. Ore shoots extended a thousand feet or more at depth in the eastern portion of the district, but in the western portion of the district, ore shoots were shallow and only a few hundred feet deep.

The Gold Road, Tom Reed and Moss veins all had distinct outcrops. These were distinct not only because of silicification, but also because of iron and manganese that produced reddish- to black-stained rock.

Crushing and panning gypsum and quartz from some veins yielded tiny gold flakes. In the San Francisco and nearby Union Pass district, calcite stained by iron or manganese was sometimes mineralized. A sample of calcite from the Pioneer vein assayed 0.16 opt Au, while unstained calcite yielded no detectable gold. Pyrite is uncommon, but where found sometimes carries gold. A sample of pyrite from the Moss vein reportedly assayed 10.8 opt Au and 30.16 opt Ag. Cavities in the sample had visible gold in limonite. Water was lacking in most mines, with the exception of the Aztec, Gold Road, and the United Eastern, where water was pumped from the lower workings.

Gold placers were very limited due to lack of active streams and tiny grain size of gold. Even so, placers were reported at various localities along Silver Creek and in tributaries that drain the Times Porphyry near Mt. Hardy in the vicinity of Times Gulch. In the drainage below the Pioneer mine (35°0’54”N; 114°24’22”W) flakes of detrital gold were recovered from panned concentrates. Nearly all of the gold was found within three feet of bedrock. Some placer gold was also found below the Moss mine where the vein contained coarse gold. Overall, placer gold was minor and gravels were low grade.

Gold Road Mine (center of section 11, T19N, R 20 W) (35°2’44”N; 114°22’36”W). The Gold Road vein forms a distinct mineralized zone with stringer ore and banded crustiform, quartz-calcite in silicified latite with widths up to 100 feet, locally. The vein strikes N50ºW and dips 80º to 85º NE occupying a fault mostly in latite. At shallow depth, the Oatman Andesite forms the footwall of the vein while latite forms the hanging wall. Examination of aerial photos in this area suggests the Gold Road structure could be as much as 9,300 feet long with buried segments.

Addwest Minerals reopened the Gold Road Mine in 1995 and outlined a 2.6 million ton gold resource with an average ore grade of 0.355 opt Au. In 1998, the mine closed due to depressed gold prices after producing 88,000 ounces of gold. The company now reports that it outlined 524,000 tons of reserves at an average grade of 0.23 opt Au. Addwest (Mohave Desert Minerals) again opened the mine in 2007 and poured its first gold bar in 2010.

Two veins are described on the property known as the north and south veins separated by barren latite. Much past mining focused on the northern vein, but stringers of both extend into the barren host rock that was considered too low grade to mine at $20/ounce. The mineralized zone is 6,435 feet long and continues to a depth of at least 680 feet.

Three ore bodies were described: Number 1 shaft ore body, Sharp ore body, and the Rice ore body. The largest ore shoot was found in the Number 1 shaft. This shoot was 900-feet-long extending from the surface to the 700-foot-level with a maximum width of 22 feet. About 600 feet to the southeast is the Sharp ore body, a blind ore shoot discovered underground starting above the 300-foot-level to the 500-foot-level. An extension of this shoot was mined between the 700- to 800-foot levels, while the vein in between ore shoots was purportedly too lean to mine at a profit. Less than 200 feet south of the #3 shaft was another blind ore deposit known as the Rice ore shoot discovered between the 300- and 500-foot-levels. This shoot had a strike length of about 400 feet.

South of the #3 shaft, vein outcrops are stained by iron and manganese oxides and small outcrops were mined along 1,500 feet of vein exposure, but in most cases, the ore did not extend below 100 feet. The vein narrows to less than 2.5 feet wide at its southernmost extent.

Moss mine (S/2 section 19 and N/2 section 30, T20N, R20W) (35°5’52.50”N; 114°26’40.39”W). The Moss mine is 6 miles northwest of Oatman: the vein has an N60°W-trend and 60° to 70°SW-dip. The mineralized structure is 45-feet-wide locally, and pinches and swells along strike. The structure ranges from 20- to 100-feet-wide with a wide mineralized zone and extensive stockworks and silicification. The Moss vein extends over a strike length of nearly a mile.

The vein is hosted by the Tertiary age Moss Quartz Monzonite Porphyry. The structure is open along strike and at depth. In the past, shafts were sunk 100- and 230-feet with 1,700-feet of drifts leading from the shafts.

The calcite-quartz vein occupies the hanging wall of a high-angle fault and is overlain by as much as 100-feet of low-grade mineralized stockworks and siliceous breccias classified as low-sulfide, adularia-sericite, epithermal vein typical of many near surface, hydrothermal veins. Such deposits are often related to paleo-hot springs and shallow geothermal systems. The vein contains some fluorite.

Along the southern portion of the vein, a group of conjugate veins occur in the hanging wall that have similar trend. Much of the historical gold and silver production from the vein was from conjugate veins.

In recent years, Patriot Gold Corporation identified auriferous veins unrelated to the primary vein that included the Discovery and Ruth veins. One hole drilled in these discoveries intersected a 5-foot section averaging 0.5 opt Au. Using a 0.01 opt cutoff grade, the Northern Miner reported that the Moss deposit has 22.6 million measured and indicated tonnes grading 0.023 opt Au and 0.26 opt Ag plus 3.9 million inferred tonnes averaging 0.017 opt Au and 0.2 opt Ag. In total, the resources for this deposit include 603,000 ounces of gold and 6.6 million ounces of silver within 650 feet of the surface.

Holes drilled in the western extension of the vein were designed to test the extension of near surface quartz-carbonate stockwork zones to the south. Multiple zones of stockwork veining were encountered within 500 feet of the surface suggesting potential for widespread stockwork mineralization to continue south. Eight additional drill holes demonstrated strong development of quartz-carbonate veins, breccias and stockworks that continue from the surface to at least 650 feet deep.



I suspect detailed geological mapping and prospecting would lead to discovery of one or more overlooked gold deposits in this district even though it has been heavily prospected in the past. The possibility of discovery of additional blind ore shoots should be considered, and will be difficult to locate. However, mapping rock alteration characteristics associated with veins could provide hints for hidden ore deposits. When you are in this area, watch for a geologist with a Wyoming T-shirt and be sure to say “hello.”