Location and History
This district is in central Los Angeles County in the general vicinity of the town of Acton, 20 miles north of Los Angeles. It also includes the area known as the Cedar district.
Placer gold was mined in the San Gabriel Mountains here as early as 1834. Lode mining apparently began here in the 1870s or 1880s. The district was quite productive until about 1900. A number of mines, including the Red Rover, Governor, and Monte Cristo, were active again during the 1930s and early 1940s. The district has been intermittently prospected since, but there has been very little recorded production. Acton was named for a village in Massachusetts, and the Governor mine for California's Governor Henry Gage.
Geology
The deposits consist of gold-quartz veins in quartz diorite, diorite, gabbro and schist. The veins are in faulted and fractured zones. The ore is free milling and contains varying amounts of pyrite. The ore bodies commonly consist of small parallel veins rather than a single large vein. The Governor mine has been developed to an incline depth of 1000 feet.
Mines
Buena Esperanza, Governor (New York) $1.5 million+, Helene, Hi-Grade, Red Rover $550,000, Puritan.
Bibliography
Gay, T. E., Jr., and Hoffman, S. R., 1954, Los Angeles County, Governor, Hi-Grade, and Red Rover mines: California Jour. Mines and Geology, vol. 50, pp. 497-500.
Merrill, F. J. H., 1919, Gold-Los Angeles County: California Min. Bur. Rept. 15, pp. 473-477.
Oakeshoft, G.B., 1958, Geology and mineral deposits of the San Fernando quadrangle: California Div. Mines Bull. 172, 147 pp.
Sampson, R. J., 1937, Gold-Los Angeles County: California Div. Mines Rept. 33, pp. 177-196.
