Show arnett creek reef of lemhi leahi county couil y idaho there is a great gold bearing reef in lembi lemhi county idaho that has never been I 1 brought directly to the attention of men of I 1 wide experience in quartz mining it is I 1 generally known that one of the richest placer fields of the west was found in the early sixties and given the name of leesburg district which is on a high plateau fifteen miles from salmon city this placer E belt yielded about in ten years from an area of less L than thirty acres in extent the pioneers leale iced that the mother lode of this auriferous deposit was a quartz ite bedrock that had been subjected to erosion along the water courses wherever this characteristic formation was cut by a water course rich placer beds were H found sometimes extending for a mile or more in all the bars that were favorable tor for gold retention many arrastias arr astras and other primitive anoli marks of an abandoned camp the pioneers found many rich veins in this reef system and their research was devoted to what they called leads within the th e mineralized reef when the pockets and seams were gouged out quartz mining was abandoned but the exposed surface of the reef on which a new harvest of placer gold was released by erosion every year continued to demand attention on arnett never been abandoned and it has been operated in a desultory manner almost every year since the days of millions of placer gold this mill is operated by water power and its capacity lacity ca is about five tons a day its record of production is about all of which was gouged from seams and pockets in a gold bearing reef while this high grade ore was being extracted from drifts tunnels and open 7 1 I z ak A ALLT L primitive fourton four ton quartz mill quarter of a century old on arnett creek ances for ore reduction were installed to ork the richer seams and pockets of this reef formation even as early as the first decade after the discovery of the camp an extensive extensive system of gouging about the exposed ased sections section of this reef resulted in good fe tunis but such surface work could not be permanent er manent the old arrastias arr astras and mills became worn and ready to be discarded as 1 me surface values were depleted and the wrecks reeks of mills are now moss covered land creek one of the divisions of the old leesburg bur camp some discoveries of rich veins within the reef formation have revived quartz mining from time to time within the past forty years five primitive quartz mills have been worn out and the frames are conspicuous landmarks in the district only one of these mills which are the latest relics in the camp of tho the age of the district has been operated within a decade what is known as the italian mine has cuts waste dumps that would yield two dollars pet ton net have been left which contain half a million more the reef formation of this belt is of sedimentary origin and seems to have deposited flat from glacial action it was enriched ric hed as a result of volcanic upheavals und flows of solutions the gold is generally associated with syenite intrusions which have tilted the reef to varying angles of dip and leit left in waves in its trend the crests of some of waves are to demonstrate a thickness of forty to feet with the th e better values near nea r the hanging wall contact but the reef formation was fractured during the period of disturbance tur bance and enrichment and the gold was deposited in an intricate vein system the veins being b ea I 1 ng generally too small and irregular to be mined with any assurance of great profit wherever the reef formation has been exposed near the syenite intrusions it is 1 s rich enough to afford splendid profits to a practical modern system of quartz mining this fact has been recently demonstrated by extensive mill tests the arnett creek has ben exposed for about one mile along the water course during the th e past year four 50 ton mill samples were taken from the various exposures deuced from shallow workings by primitive methods and desultory efforts the ore has been of about 20 grade and the veins which have been sloped have averaged about fifteen inches in width but the veins have not been very permanent above the shallow tunnel level the gouging methods have bankrupted the mine at var ijac IVI I 1 1 I h k 41 ar A taking a fifty ton sample from the arnett creek reef along the course of this reef and run through the old italian mill the assay average of these ores was while the saving was per ton these large samples were taken from cuts and outcrops which had been gouged and sorted by the pioneers who operated the arrastias arr astras and other primitive plants the saving was lo lower werthan than the character ch of the ore would indicate this result was probably largely due to the imperfections of the old mill by which the ore was reduced this sample was conservative in the extreme the results promise a large profit to the economic operation of a modern plant of large capacity there are millions of tons of this ore practically in sight NEWTON nawton HIBBS leesburg lee burg ida the old italian mine since the receipt of the above correspondence pon dence from mr hibbs it is learned that the old italian mine has been sold in connection with the reorganization of the bitter root mining company of the leesburg district and that ample funds will be forthcoming for its systematic operation and development under the direct management of mr hibbs at one time the italian inane mme was owned by a salt lake company but for some reason it reverted back to its owners the property has changed hands several times and it is gratifying to learn that it is now to be operated in a manner which its merit so richly deserves the recorder of salmon idaho in speaking of the change of ownership of the italian says this mine has a record of pro ious times and discouraged ed the old owners then came the careful and frugal italians who sold the mine four times and received substantial payments in advance to get the mine back by forfeits to restore it for successive wreckers the present owners paid for the mine in full and the practical italians lost all equities in the property but the thia same gouging process brought the mine to the same bankrupt condition as an inevitable result it lay idle for three yea years r till last spring when mr hibbs began the costly work of 0 restoration after the fifth wrecking campaign in the history of the old gold pro ducer after an expenditure of several thousand dollars the yellow metal smiled from tunnel and shaft so alluringly that it attracted investors in these panic times mr hibbs who has made a special study of wrecked mines and the restoration arter after the tenderfoot has done his worst deserves credit credia for the polish he has put on this old five times loser the italian mine has more years of history and a better record of bullion than any other quartz mine in lemhi leahi county the product is almost pure gold and it is easy of reduction by the amalgamation process its vein ve n system is in a formation which has been tilted and fracture by the intrusion of syenite dike intricate fissures were filled with enriched vein matter during the period of volcanic disturbance which lifted up the leesburg mountain range there is an extensive gold bearing zone of which wh ich the syenite dike is the hanging wall while the lich veins are not confined to the immediate contact of the two formations they follow the trend of the true contact very closely this ore zone is perhaps the greatest gold deposit in the state of idaho the payable low grade ore dips under the dike that enriched it at an angle of fifty degrees from the horizontal and the pay zone is from forty to feet thick the high grade rade veins traverse this zone irregularly but in intimate relation it is now proven that either the low grade dike or the hi high h grade vein system insure the italian to be a million dollar mine war 4 71 7 AC 0 V 1 A 4 ET 6 A 1 pl I 1 an exposure of ninety feet of ore on the arnett creek reef |