- Camping
- Gold
- Parking
- Sapphires
- Garnets
- Silver
The Bureau of Mines has estimated that demonstrated U.S. reserves of gold are 85 million ounces. Approximately one-half of the total resources are estimated to be by-product gold, while 40% of the remaining one-half (56 million ounces) could be mined for gold alone … Most U.S. gold resources are in the nation’s western states. About 80% of the U.S. gold resources are estimated to be in Alaska, California, Idaho, Montana and Washington. (Earthsearch, Inc. 1983)
Overview of the Mines
The Valley Gold 3 Mine is in an area with rich gold mining history. Estimates by Lyden (1948, p. 98-103) suggest that placer production before 1904 may have exceeded 120,000 ounces. As with all old mines and mining districts in the Western U.S., the old timers NEVER got it all!
Gold Creek and it's tributaries, lying south of the Gold Creek Station on the Northern Pacific Railroad, hold the distinction of being the site of the first discovery of gold in Montana... Pikes Peak Creek - These placer deposits have been worked intermittently since 1862 when a party of prospectors from Colorado, including J.M. Bozeman after whom the city of Bozeman was named, arrived and tried thier luck in the virgin gravel bars. The creek was named after that part of the territory from which this group of prospectors hailed (Stuart, 1896, p. 122)
By 1870 it is said that $20,000,000 in placer gold had been taken from the gulches (Wolle, 1963, p. 220)
An engineer, reporting on the possibilities of this district... has estimated that in 500 acres of ground along Pikes Peak Creek there are 20,000,000 yd3 of gravel that contain 22 cents/yd3, recoverable gold (M26, MBMG, 1948)
While it is sometimes said old mines have been ‘worked out’ as the saying means there is no gold left, the truth is “it is better to say they are worked over; it is also true that the primitive methods used and the wasteful haste to get rich indulged in, left much of the gold in the ground, so that improved methods … will give even better results than those first obtained.” (MBMG Open Report 466)
Details about the Mine:
| Access to the Mine | You can drive a full size truck/RV to the mine. |
| Total Workings | Over 600 feet of creek bed estimated. This assessment is based on what surveyors observed while on site. Loose gravels in the creek bed of small pebbles to larger boulders. Boulders are great places for the gold to hide. Benches on both sides of the creek are virgin ground. |
| Minerals in the Mine | Free milling gold, gold nuggets and or gems. Historically mined for gold. Minerals of sapphire, silver, black sands with rare earth minerals are known in to be in the ground. |
| Foot traffic at the mine | Some |
| Last Worked | Unknown |
| Number of Mines | 1 Placer |
| Nearest city with amenities | Deerlodge, approximately 18 miles |
| Access to the Claim | A very good dirt road breaks off from the Interstate and runs all the way onto the claim. |
| Parking and Staging on the Claim | Claim is situated so it allows for parking of vehicles if desired. |
| Structures on claim | None |
| Resources | Year round water, grasses, sage and trees |
| Elevation | Aprox. 5700 feet |
Montana is ranked 7th by the USGS for total gold production in the US and has 31 mining districts. Gold production for the 1800’s to 1968 is 17.8 million ounces and large amounts of gold have been mined from 1968 to present. Geologists have predicted that based on the past and the geology of Montana that several large gold and silver deposits will be found and developed in the future (Bergendahl and Koshmann, 1968).
Climate / Weather
USGS Information
Economic information about the deposit and operations |
|
| Operation Type | Placer |
|---|---|
| Development Status | Past Producer |
| Commodity type | Metallic |
| Commodities |
Gold- Primary Silver - Tertiary |
| Nearby Scientific Data | Glacial Drift |
| References | USGS Database - 10022669, 10270508, 10124553 |
Mining District Information
| Pikes Peak | |
| On May 8 1862, Granville Stuart set up the first effective sluices in Montana. When he found gold, the news was not lost on the prospectors passing through the area. A party of prospectors arrived on May 14 and found diggings that paid 20 cents per pan. On May 20 another party arrived and prospected along a branch of Gold Creek which they named Pikes Peak Creek. On June 1, yet another group of prospectors arrived on the scene and found gravel that paid about $10 to the man by working the stream with sluices (Pardee 1951). | |
| Early placer mining in the Gold Creek area, later to become known as the Pioneer district, was hindered by a lack of sufficient water to mine placer deposits topograph-ically higher than the active streams and by the abundance of large boulders in gold-bearing stream channels. During much of the 1860's, prospectors were more attracted to richer and more easily worked placers such as the Bannack and Alder Gulch districts, approximately 150 mi south of the Pioneer district. The construction of the Rock Creek ditch in 1868-69 rejuvenated mining activity in the Pioneer district and led to discovery and mining of many rich placer deposits in succeeding years (Pardee, 1951 ). The Pioneer district eventually produced approximately $6 million (value at time of production) in gold from placers. | |
| In 1868 or 1869 Conrad Kohrs and others, formed the Rock Creek Ditch Company, to build a 16 mile canal to deliver water from Rock Creek to the Pioneer, Pike's Peak Creek, and Pikes Peak districts. The system initially delivered water to the Gold Hill terraces; the first terrace to be worked was the slope descending down to Pikes Peak Creek. These terraces contained rich gold deposits. Several hundred men worked the placers and a reported $140,000 was recovered in a single season from a pit on Batterton Bar. By 1870, it was estimated that $20,000,000 in placer gold had been taken from the gulches (Pardee 1951; Wolle 1963). | |
| As these placers grew, the town of Yam Hill became deserted and a new town of Pioneer City began to grow. It has been estimated that over a million dollars of gold dust (at $20.67 per ounce) was removed from the Pioneer Bar in the late 1870s and early 1880s (Pardee 1951; Wolle 1963). | |
| Production figures for the creeks of the district have generally been combined reports, so a fair and accurate estimate of the production of each creek cannot be made. The total production of the placer mines in the district, up to 1949, was estimated to be $28,526,000. | |
| Gold Creek and Pikes Peak Creek flow into an area of complexly folded and faulted Mesozoic and Paleozoic sediments which have been intruded by an elongated batholith of quartz monzonite. The lode deposits occur in veins and replacement deposits in highly altered granite or quartz monzonite. None of the lode deposits have been particularly important as points of production, but erosion of these gold-bearing deposits have resulted in extensive placer deposits in ... Pikes Peak Creek. The placer gold occurs in recent stream gravels and also in bench gravels. The deposits have been mined by sluicing, hydraulicking, and dredging (Sahinen 1935). | |
| Prior to ... 1934, nearly half of the gold recovered in the district came from the Pikes Peak placers. The Batterton Bar in the district produced $140,000 in a single season. Gold was found in small particles with some nuggets up to $10 in value. The gold assayed at $17.75 an ounce at a time when pure gold ran $21.67. Some gold from the Larrabee Bank ran as high as $18.60 per ounce. | |
| GOLD IS CONTAINED IN AND RECONCENTRATED FROM PLEISTOCENE GLACIAL DEBRIS. | |
