National District
Overview
Other Names: Buckskin-National
County: Humboldt
Discovered: 1907
Commodities: gold, silver, mercury, antimony, tungsten, arsenic
Comments
The National district includes the western slope of the northern Santa Rosa Range, extending from Buckskin Mountain on the southeast to the drainage of Eightmile Creek on the northwest.
References
Stuart, 1909, p. 125; Hill, 1912, p. 213; Lincoln, 1923, p. 100; Stoddard, 1932, p. 46; Lawrence, 1963, p. 73; Vanderburg, 1938a, p. 31; Willden, 1964, table 22, 23; La Heist, 1964, p. 66; Stager and Tingley, 1988, p. 74
National and Rebel Creek Placer District Description
Location
Location: West flank of the Santa Rosa Range between Santa Rosa Peak and Buckskin Mountain, Tps. 43 and 45 N., Rs. 38 and 39 E.
Topographic Maps
Hinkey Summit and McDermitt 15-minute quadrangles.
Geologic Maps
Willden, 1964, Geologic map of Humboldt County, Nevada (pi. 1), scale 1:250,000.
Access
From Winnemucca, 49 miles north on U.S. Highway 95 to dirt road leading to Rebel Creek Ranch. Other roads parallel the main highway along the range front for 14 miles north to Canyon Creek.
Extent
Placers occur in several of the creeks that drain the west flank of the Santa Rosa Range on the east side of the Quinn River Valley. The creeks reported to contain placer gold are (from south to north) the Rebel, Willow, Pole, and Canyon. Most of the placer-mining activity was concentrated along Willow Creek (T. 44 N., R. 38 E.), which was worked as early as the 1870's by Chinese miners, who reportedly washed much coarse gold from 6 miles of the canyon.
American miners turned the placer ground over to the Chinese miners because of the great depth of bedrock and the lack of drainage in the flat countryside. No descriptions of the exact location of the placers have been found.
Production History
Recorded placer production, which amounts to only a few ounces, has been credited to districts called Rebel Creek, National, and Quinn River. The gold credited to the National district was probably recovered from Canyon Creek (T. 45 N., R. 39 E.), as no placer gold is known to occur in creeks that drain the immediate vicinity of the National district (T. 46 N., R. 39 E.). The early production is unknown.
Source
The gold was probably derived from numerous minor gold- silver-copper-lead deposits of Late Cretaceous or early Tertiary age that are widely distributed throughout the range, or from the less abundant but richer gold-silver deposits of late Tertiary age that formed the ores in the Buckskin and National districts.
Literature
Burchard, 1884: Reports placer mining in 1883.
Compton, in Willden, 1964, p. 122-127: Describes lode deposits in vicinity of placers.
Lindgren, 1915: States that no placers were found in vicinity of National district mines.
Paher, 1970 : Placer-mining history in Rebel and Willow Creeks.
Vanderburg, 1936a: Names placer gulches; brief history of mining.
