It's hard to believe that it has been more than three decades since I discovered gold in the Rattlesnake Hills in central Wyoming and classified the new gold district as an Archean (>2.5 billion years old) greenstone belt. Gold in the Rattlesnakes is similar to rich deposits mined at Cripple Creek, Colorado.
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| One of the first gold discoveries in the Rattlesnake Hills - a deposit named "Lost Muffler" after the author donated a muffler from a 1975 Bronco to an outcrop along UT Creek in the Rattlesnakes. Sample of pyritized, auriferous exhalite from the greenstone belt. |
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| Goat Mountain Tertiary instrusive into the greenstone belt rocks. In foreground is one of several gold-veins. |
The first four questions pertain to gold in the Rattlesnake Hills. After I found gold in this district and started a gold rush in 1982, I thought this area would one day have a gold mine. But I also thought the mine would have been developed by 1985 or 1986.
Prior to this discovery, I started a gold rush in 1981 in the Seminoe Mountains. But that area has never really been explored and was tied up for years by a promoter who was interested in making too much money for the property. I also started a mini gold rushes to Purgatory Gulch in the Sierra Madre in 1988, Garrett along the western flank of the Laramie Range in 1989, Mineral Hill in the Black Hills in 1990, Puzzler Hill in the Sierra Madre in 1995 and several rushes to South Pass in the 1980s and 1990s.
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| My map board sitting on one of the gold-bearing stockworks I found in the district. |
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| gold-bearing breccia with my map board |
Government doesn't work! And when it does, it's usually out on a coffee break! When was the last time you found a government employee willing to help you (and give you correct information)? When was the last time you saw a government employee actually working? All government agencies (especially Congress) should be placed under a Sunset law and every 2 years they should be able to prove they provided some benefit the public and cut costs. If not - hit the delete button and delete the trash! It this were to happen, it wouldn't take long and the list of government agencies would quickly diminish, we would have a balanced budget, and a few remaining agencies would learn how to work for the people who pay their salaries.
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| Gold-silver-copper vein from Pickwick prospect, Absaroka Mountains. |
Sorry, got off on a tangent. Its easy to do when government is filled with corrupt politicians and swamp people - take Biden for instance - PLEASE! Back to geology.
Wyoming is an extreme anomaly. The state produced considerably less gold than the states surrounding it, yet it sits in the middle of craton with some greenstone belt synforms. Cratons usually have considerable gold (as well as diamonds, nickel, platinum group metals, etc). So where is all of that gold hiding? Unfortunately, a good part of it was taken from the public by the Federal government!. Yep, those extraordinary gold-silver-copper deposits in the Absaroka mountains and Yellowstone those incredible copper-zinc-gold-silver volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits in the Sierra Madre Mountains, those platinum-group metals in the Medicine Bow Mountains, were all withdrawn from exploration and claim staking - shouldn't that be decided by the public who owns the land, rather than a bunch of card-carrying sierra club members driving around in government vehicles. It doesn't stop there. The great Carissa gold mine at South Pass was taken from the public by the State of Wyoming as has been much of the South Pass greenstone belt. There there are strategic metals at the Lake Owen layered complex and the Mullen Creek layered complex also removed from exploration. SO, whatever happened to the 1872 mining law? And for that matter, whatever happened to the US Constitution, and where did the backbones go for the Supreme Court?
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| Colloform volcanogenic massive sulfide with pyrite mantled by chalcopyrite in magnetite matrix discovered by Conoco Minerals in 1979 and quickly and quietly withdrawn from public land by the US Forest Service. A deposit similar to the United Verde massive sulfide deposit. |
But there are still some good gold deposits that need to be investigated further (until the goverment takes these also). Take for instance the Oregon Buttes- Dickie Springs 28.5 million ounce Tertiary paleoplacer at the base of the South Pass greenstone belt. Where did all of that gold come from? Well, Hecla showed anomalies right under the northern edge paleoplacer that were likely the source of the gold - why isn't anyone looking for this? Then there is the question of the Seminoe Mountains-Miracle Mile gold-diamond paleoplacer along the northern edge of the Seminoe Mountains. What is there? Where did all of the gold and diamond stability minerals come from?
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| Stockworks in Copper King granodiorite |
How about the Copper King gold deposit near Cheyenne? I like this one and have for many years and its the reason why I spent time looking at the hydrothermal alteration characteristics. Over the years, I was able to get companies to look at the property - it is a deeply eroded root zone of a porphyry gold-copper deposit that now has about 2 million gold-equivalent ounces. This property has possibilities all around it. I found evidence of hydrothermal alteration all around this deposit and mapped a fault zone along the eastern edge that offset the ore deposit, with a block down dropped on the east flank - so there is likely more gold in that block. And what is at depth? Some of the porphyry deposits in Arizona have very high grade deposits hidden at depth. Then there are similar anomalies identified by
Klein (1974) and myself.
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| Looking for gold - the author in 2012 searching for the mother lode |
