See also Idaho County Idaho Gold Production
Buffalo Hump District
Commodities: gold, silver, copper
Most of the lode mines in this district, which was formerly called the Robbins, are in the vicinity of Buffalo Hump. The roads built here in the late nineties are now passable only to pack-animals, but the distances to highways are rarely more than a few miles. The lode mines around Buffalo Hump appear to have produced about $700,000, comparatively little having been done for over 15 years.
The area is underlain mainly by granitic, gneissic, and schistose rocks. Most of the lodes in the Buffalo Hump district are in a vein system occupying a zone 5 miles long with a maximum width of 1-3/4 miles, and containing over 20 veins. This zone occupied the crest of what appears to be a large anticline trending somewhat west of north. Most of the veins trend northeast, apparently without any such relation to regional stretching as exists in the Elk City district although otherwise the veins are similar.
A number of veins outside of the Buffalo Hump vein system have been mined in the Robbins district. One of the most extensively developed of these is in the War Eagle mine in the southern part of the district, Lenses of vein quartz, in part accentuated by post-mineral faulting, are enclosed in a hybrid granodiorite containing admixed sedimentary material. The usual simple sulphides, native gold, and possibly a telluride are present, Gold, silver, and copper are recovered. The principal ore shoot is reported to average $30 a ton.
Bungalow District
Commodity: gold
This is a placer district from which considerable production is reported. There has been hydraulic work in recent years. The district has not been described in print.
Camp Howard District
Commodity: gold
The Camp Howard district appears to correspond to the northern part of the Simpson district, as plotted on Plate 1 (see p. 60 of this pamphlet). The 1932 report of the State Inspector of Mines lists ten properties in the Camp Howard district. Apparently all are inactive, and presumably all placers. No other data are available.
Chamberlain Basin District
Commodities: gold, copper
This district, accessible only by trail and airplane, contains gold and copper lode and placer prospects, but none has yet received much development.
The district is underlain by the Idaho batholith and its border facies of gneissic quartz-diorite and injection gneiss. The lodes are in the marginal rocks. Some are quartz veins with tremolite and small amounts of pyrrhotite and galena; others have partly oxidized copper-silver-gold sulphides in quartz. The gravel of Chamberlain Basin has not yet been adequately tested, but its topographic situation is such as to appear favorable to the accumulation of placer gold, if the surrounding hills contain adequate source material. One reason for the scanty development here is the remoteness from existing routes of transportation.
Clearwater District
Commodity: gold
The 1932 report of the State Inspector of Mines lists two properties in the Clearwater district, Idaho County. These are actually in or close to the district of that name in the adjacent part of Nezperce County (p. 79 of this pamphlet).
Cottonwood Buttes District
Commodities: gold, silver, copper
This district, which is served by a branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad, contains quartz veins reported to carry gold, silver, and copper in an area of older rocks projecting through the Columbia River basalt. It is in and near T. 32 N., R. 2 E. Development appears to be very scanty. Apparently some prospecting for coal has been carried on in the Tertiary beds here. A little placer mining has been done in the Cottonwood Buttes district and also near Kenterville about 10 miles southwest.
Crooks Corral District
Commodity: copper
This district is between the Snake and Salmon Rivers near Lucilo. The principal development is at the Blue Jacket mine (idle in recent years) where it is reported that schistose diorite or diabase, locally 50 feet wide, contains disseminated chalcopyrite and oxidized copper minerals.
Dixie District
Commodity: gold
This district until recently was reached only by trails from the Elk City highway. A few years ago, a road was built to the Dixie Ranger Station. Placer mining began here in 1861 and lode mining in 1891. The placers have a recorded production of $270,000, probably less than the real total, and the lodes have produced possibly $50,000. Little has been done in recent years. The geology and ore deposits resemble those of the Elk City district.
Elk City District
Commodity: gold
This district is now served by a highway from Grangeville on the Camas, pacific Railroad, about 60 miles away, which greatly decreases the transportation difficulty from which the area has long suffered. Placer deposits here were discovered in 1861. Published estimates of the placer production of the district range from $10,000,000 to $18,500,000, and, since 1902, lode mines have produced over $725,000, the prior production from lodes being small.
This district is mainly underlain by gneiss related to the Idaho batholith. In its eastern portion the quartz monzonite of the batholith proper is capped by small residual patches of quartzite. The valley around Elk City is floored by Tertiary sediments.
Most of the lodes are made up of quartz lenses, maximum observed thickness 20 feet, and length 300 feet or more, grouped in a radiating system in the gneiss close to the quartz monzonite or granodiorite contacts and commonly trending nearly at right angles to the linear schistosity in the gneiss, Sulphides commonly make up less than 5 per cent of the ore and include pyrite, tetrahedrite, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, galena, with some native gold and minor amounts of other metallic minerals. With local exceptions, oxidation is shallow. There is faulting, both parallel and transverse to the veins.
Gold is widely distributed in small amounts in the Tertiary sediments, the so-called “high level placer deposits” of the area. These have largely been left as the gold content was too low for profit under primitive conditions of operation. Richer placer deposits, now largely worked out, were formed by reconcentration of the old sediments in two stages along modern streams.
Florence District
Commodity: gold
This district (about 46 miles from Grangeville, the terminus of the Camas, Pacific Railroad, the last half of the road being nearly impassable to vehicles) was one of the richest of the early placer camps, its production of placer gold being roughly estimated at $22,500,000. In contrast, lode mining so far has been negligible although a number of small veins are known. Recently there has been some revival of placer mining. The geology resembles that of the Elk City district
Green Mountain District
Commodities: copper, silver
The Bunker Hill and Sullivan Company operated a copper-silver prospect in this district in 1929 and 1930. It is now reached by a road from Elk City.
Harpster District
Commodities: gold, copper
Near Harpster, which is within 15 miles of both Stites and Grangeville, the ends of two branch railroads, small amounts of quartz diorite and somewhat larger masses of Permian (?) volcanics lie west of a great mass of schist and gneiss overlying the Idaho batholith and east of the widespread Columbia River basalt. Close to the town there are gash quartz veins carrying some gold in both the quartz diorite and volcanics. About 5 miles away there are wide silicified breccia zones in the volcanics containing pyrite, some chalcopyrite, and small amounts of gold.
The gold tenor of the ore mined is reported to be about a tenth of an ounce a ton, with local, highgrade seams. A small production has been obtained, mainly from the veins of the Dewey mine (for which the district is sometimes named). Little active mining has been done in the district for years.
Lolo District
Commodity: copper
This district, which is served by the branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad which extends from Lewiston to Stites, contains a number of copper veins, some of which have received a little development. The district is mainly underlain by quartz diorite and gneiss of the border zone of the Idaho batholith. The veins are fissure fillings of irregular widths, varying from a few inches up to 6 feet. They contain quartz in which chalcopyrite and minor amounts of other sulphides are commonly sporadically and sparsely distributed.
Lowell District
Commodity: gold
Near Lowell on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River, some prospecting has been done, A little placer gold production has been reported from here and other places in this part of northern Idaho County.
Maggie Creek District
Commodity: asbestos
This district, which is close to Kooskia on a branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad, contains the asbestos deposits of Kamiah Buttes. Small shipments were made in 1910, 1917, and probably other years. The deposits are lens-shaped masses, containing anthophyllite asbestos (mass fiber) alligned parallel to the trend of the enclosing schist and gneiss and probably formed by hydrothermal metamorphism from the nearby Idaho batholith. Similar deposits are known in several places in the vicinity and in Clearwater County, but have received little attention.
Marshall Lake District
Commodities: gold, silver
Placer mining was carried on in the southern part of this district, sometimes called the Resort district, which is 40 miles by highway from McCall (the terminus of a branch of the Union Pacific Railroad), in the sixties and seventies and has continued intermittently to the present. The record of the early production here is merged with that of the nearby Warren district, and hence can not be ascertained.
Lodes were discovered about 1876, but produced little until after 1900. The production from 1902 to 1928 totalled $289,222 in gold and silver, of which nearly 90 per cent was produced in 1916 to 1918 when the Holte (now the Golden Anchor) was at the peak of its production. There has been considerable activity at this and the adjoining Sherman-Howe mine in recent years and numerous prospects have also received attention.
Most of the known lodes are in the northern part of the district and a large part of this area is underlain by schistose Belt rocks, forming a roof pendent in the Idaho batholith. The schist has been more or less thoroughly injected by igneous material and locally by quartz and out by dikes and stringers of aplite, lamprophyre, and pegmatite.
Most of the lodes strike east and many dip south. They are narrow bodies of quartz with stringers of aplite and pegmatite intimately associated with them. Post-mineral faulting has locally occurred, but most of the abrupt terminations and en echelon arrangements of quartz masses result from original deposition. The lode matter commonly contains only a few per cent of metallic minerals, mainly metallic gold, argentiferous tetrahedrite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, sphalerite, and galena, and is valuable mainly for its moderate content of gold.
Newsome District
This is the northern part of the Tenmile district (lower on this page) and by many is regarded as a separate district.
Orogrande District
Commodities: gold, copper
This district is about 60 miles by highway from the railroad at Grangeville, and most of the mines are accessible by recently constructed or improved roads. The production, largely from gold lodes, in the past 30 years has been over $100,000. Of this a considerable amount came from the Gnome mine in 1933 and 1934. Some copper has been mined.
The district is underlain by the Idaho batholith and related gneiss with small dacitic intrusions of probable Tertiary age.
Several of the lodes consist of sparsely disseminated auriferous pyrite in large shear zones in schist more or less silicified and containing much pegmatitic material, locally termed dike or reef deposits. In places, such shear zones attain widths of half a mile. They are very low-grade, but are of possible interest for large-scale operation. Lentioular gold quartz veins similar to those of the Elk City district, but not in such a well defined vein system are being developed in several properties.
The Petsite lode differs from most in this part of Idaho in that it appears to be of Tertiary age because part of the mineralization is in a dacite stock believed to be of that age. Small, vuggy quartz veins and stringers in the dacite and nearby granodiorite contain pyrite, chalcopyrite, galena, and minor amounts of tetradymite, molybdenite, and probably wolframite, and scheelite.
Salmon River Canyon placers
Commodity: gold
At intervals along the Salmon River from the upper end of the Simpson district to the vicinity of Shoup there are small placer workings operated only when water conditions are favorable. Among these is a deposit near the mouth of Butts Creek, production from which is mentioned in Mineral Resources for 1925, pt. 1, p. 536, 1928; pt. 1, p. 669; 1929, pt. 1, p. 391. The production from most of the other operations along this part of the Salmon is doubtless merged with that of such districts as Dixie and Warren where the gold is marketed.
Simpson District
Commodity: gold
This is chiefly a placer district, most operations being along the Salmon between Freedom and Riggins. Many term it the Salmon River district. Placer gold appears to have been produced here at intervals for a long time. A number of the companies recently active here claim the presence of rare metals not substantiated by reliable independent assayers or of gold not detectable by ordinary assay methods.
Tenmile District
Commodity: gold
This district, which includes the Newsome, is crossed by a new highway from Grangeville at the end of a branch railroad. Its northern part is served by a road about 45 miles long from Stites, the terminus of another branch line. A new highway from Lewiston is almost completed into the district. Placers were found here in 1861 and the production from this source is about $2,000,000, the better deposits being largely worked out. The production from lodes in 1900-1931 has been about $170,000. In 1932, the Lone Pine mine built a new mill and since then has largely increased its production. Several other prospects are also being actively developed.
The geology and the character of the lodes and placers resemble those of the adjacent Elk City district (p. 55) except that the lodes do not appear to belong to such a compact vein system and have not been proved to have the consistent relation to regional stretching exhibited by the veins of Elk City.
Warren District
Commodity: gold
This district is about 50 miles by highway from McCall, the terminus of a branch of the Union Pacific Railroad. Placer deposits here were discovered in 1862 and lode mining began in 1866. The total production of this and the neighboring Marshall Lake district was estimated by Lindgren in 1897 to be in excess of $15,000,000 of which about $2,000,000 was from lodes. Since then, about $500,000 has been produced, nearly half of which probably came from placers. Interest in the placers has recently been renewed by the installation of dredges in the Warren meadows.
Most of the district is underlain by the Idaho batholith. Although 250 veins had been recorded in the district as early as 1871, few have ever been much developed and much of the production has come from the Little Giant and Rescue mines.
The lodes are mostly narrow bodies of quartz within wider zones of shearing and alteration. In some places, such as the lower Little Giant workings, a number of parallel lodes are close together. Locally rich ore occurs on sets of complimentary joints called floors. The metallic minerals include gold, pyrite, tetrahedrite, sphalerite, galena, arsenopyrite, and locally scheelite, stibnite, and ruby silver, and in the aggregate rarely exceed 2-1/2 per cent of the vein matter. Much of the ore contains nearly an ounce and a half of gold to the ton and much of that mined in the early days ran over 5 ounces to the ton. Oxidation is everywhere slight. Locally post-mineral faulting is conspicuous but displacements are generally small.
Most of the placer deposits are in the Warren and Secesh meadows; broad,flat expanses of gravel and sand surrounded by hills. Locally the width of the meadows exceeds 2 miles.
