Buffalo Mountain District
Overview
Commodities: gold, manganese, copper, silver
Comments
Located at the north end of the Tobin Range, north of Smelser Pass, and extends to Lone Tree Hill, near Interstate 80, and south into Pershing County.
References
Bonham and others, 1985
Buffalo Valley District
Overview
County: Lander
Commodities: gold, copper, manganese, silver, lead, zinc
Comments
Located on the west side of Battle Mountain, 17 miles south of Valmy.
References
Stoddard, 1932, p. 49; Vanderburg, 1939, p. 37; Stewart and others, 1977, p. 74; Wong, 1982, table 1
Bullfrog District
Overview
Other Names: Rhyolite, Pioneer, Beatty, Gold Bar, Happy Hooligan, Grapevine
County: Nye
Discovered: 1904
Commodities: gold, silver, copper, lead, montmorillonite clay, uranium
Comments
This district is located in the Bullfrog Hills, west of Beatty, and extends from towns of Bullfrog and Rhyolite on the south to the camp of Pioneer on the north, and from Beatty on the east to the Gold Bar and Happy Hooligan mines on the west. The Grapevine section is 22 miles west of Beatty.
References
Ball, 1906, p. 72; Stuart, 1909, p. 90; Hill, 1912, p. 220, 221; Lincoln, 1923, p. 162; Stoddard, 1932, p. 64, 67; Kral, 1951, p. 28; Papke, 1970, p. 29-30; Cornwall, 1972, p. 36; Garside, 1973, p. 92
Bullfrog Placer District Description
Location
Bullfrog Hills and Bare Mountain on both sides of the Amar- gosa River. Tps. 10-13 S., Rs. 45-48 E.
Topographic Maps
All 15-minute quadrangles—Bullfrog, Bare Mountain, Thirsty Canyon.
Geologic Maps
Cornwall and Kleinhampl, 1961, Geology of the Bare Mountain quad- rangle, Nevada, scale 1 : 62,500.
1964, Geologic map and sections of the Bullfrog quadrangle, Nye County, Nevada-California (pi. 1), scale 1:48,000.
Lipman, Quinlivan, Carr, and Anderson, 1966, Geologic map of the Thirsty Canyon SE quadrangle, Nye County, Nevada, scale 1 : 24,000.
Access
From Tonopah, 84 miles south on U.S. Highway 95 to Beatty. Mining areas are accessible by roads that extend from Beatty into sur- rounding hills.
Extent
Small amounts of gold have been recovered intermittently from placers in the Bullfrog district, which includes the Bullfrog Hills and the Amargosa Valley in the vicinity of Beatty (Tps. 11 and 12 S., Rs. 45 and 46 E., Bullfrog quadrangle). Some placer gold was reportedly recovered from gravels along the Amargosa Valley near the town of Beatty, east of the Bullfrog Hills.
Placer gold is reported to occur in the Carrara or Flourine district (sometimes also called the Beatty district) from the west slope of the Bare Mountains, southeast of the Bullfrog Hills (Tps. 12 and 13 S., R. 47 E., Bare Mountain quadrangle) ; the deposit was considered uneconomic.
One report notes a Paramount placer property located 1 5 miles northeast of Beatty in which the gravel is partly cemented and work was done by drifting into high-grade material. The location given for the prop- erty indicates the Camp Transvaal mining area (at the border of Tps. 10 and 11 S., R. 48 E., Thirsty Canyon quadrangle), southwest of Timber Mountain.
Production History
The placer gold production from this area has been small and intermittent. Most of the placer gold was recovered in 1912 and 1914.
Source
Since the exact location of the placers are not known, directly related source areas cannot be named. Numerous gold lodes present in both the Bullfrog Hills and Bare Mountain are the most probable source of the placer gold. In the Bullfrog Hills, the lodes are typically finely disseminated gold and silver in grains of pyrite in fissures and veins related to normal faults; in the Original Bullfrog lode (sec. 12, T. 12 S., R. 45 E.) native gold occurs as visible particles. On the west side of Bare Mountain, gold deposits occur in shear zones.
Literature
Cornwall and Kleinhampl, 1964: Describes ore deposits. Krai, 1951: Describes lode deposits at Bullfrog Hills and Bare Moun- tain; notes placer property northeast of Beatty; describes methods of working.
Vanderburg, 1936a: Notes placers in Amargosa River and Bare Moun- tain; states that the deposits have no economic importance.
