Beauty Bay District
Commodities: lead, silver
This area, which is reached by road and boat from Coeur d’Alene on the Northern Pacific Railraod, is underlain by Belt strata with Tertiary basalt flows along Coeur d’Alene Lake. There are intrusive bodies that have been tentatively regarded as Tertiary. A few lead-silver, arsenic and bismuth lodes are known, but there has been little development.
Hayden Lake District
Commodities: lead, silver, copper
Several lodes have been prospected for lead, silver, and copper ore in the Hayden Lake district. Exploration has continued up to the present time, but the results as yet are small. Belt strata and bodies of granodiorite lie east and south of Hayden Lake, which is a short distance north of Coeur d’Alene on the Northern Pacific Railroad. On the west and north there are patches of Tertiary basalt and areas of glacial deposits.
Lake Front District
This area, which is served on the north by a branch of the Union Pacific and on the south by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, is underlain by Belt strata with Tertiary basalt flows along the shore of Coeur d’Alene Lake. Mining is apparently inactive as the district is not mentioned in the 1932 report of the State Inspector of Mines.
Little North Fork District
Commodities: copper, lead, silver
This district is served on the south by a branch of the Union Pacific Railroad and on the north is not far from Bayview on the Spokane International Railroad. The district is underlain by Belt strata and contains a few prospects and mines for copper and lead-silver ores. The principal producer of copper in the district is the Empire mine, in Shoshone County, close to the county boundary.
In this and other copper mines in the district, the veins are in quartzite, are a few inches up to 50 feet thick, and contain chalcopyrite and pyrite in a gangue of quartz and siderite. The results of oxidation extend to depths of about 100 feet, but secondary enrichment appears to have been slight. One shoot in the Empire contains about 50 per cent copper, but the average content of the lode is reported to be about 1-1/2 per cent copper.
Medimont District
Commodities: lead, copper
The area near Medimont and Lane, stations on the branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, is underlain by Belt strata and contains a few prospects for lead and copper, some of which have been recently operated.
Wolf Lodge District
Commodities: lead, silver
This district, close to Coeur d’Alene on a branch of the Northern Pacific Railroad, is underlain by Belt strata locally covered by basalt, and contains several lead-silver prospects, some of which have received more development than most others in the county.
In 1923, in this and other parts of Kootenai County, interest was aroused by the reported presence of platinum and related metals, but investigation by the Idaho Bureau of Mines and Geology and cooperating organizations failed to show the presence of any platinum in samples taken from the places where high returns had been reported. The supposed platinum occurrences are in slightly altered basic dikes and in quartz veins, both in quartzite of the Belt series. The properties visited and sampled are the Home Builder, Caribou, and Wilson Mutual or Green. At the second property mentioned a small quartz vein containing arsenopyrite, pyrite, galena, and sphalerite was noted.
