Osceola District Placer Deposits

Site Name

Primary: Osceola District Placer Deposits
Secondary: Dry Gulch Placers
Secondary: Osceola Gravel Mining Co. (pre-1880)
Secondary: Osceola Placer Mining Co. (1880s)
Secondary: Grub Gulch
Secondary: Maryann Canyon
Secondary: Tilford Placers
Secondary: Hogum
Secondary: Solomon Placer Claims
Secondary: Weaver Creek placers

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Commodity

Primary: Gold

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Location

State: Nevada
County: White Pine
District: Osceola District

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Land Status

Land ownership: Private
Note: the land ownership field only identifies whether the area the mine is in is generally on public lands like Forest Service or BLM land, or if it is in an area that is generally private property. It does not definitively identify property status, nor does it indicate claim status or whether an area is open to prospecting. Always respect private property.

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Holdings

Not available

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Workings

Not available

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Ownership

Owner Name: Goldwinn Resources
Info Year: 1981

Owner Name: Teck Corp
Info Year: 1981

Owner Name: Western Consolidated Mines
Home Office: Denver CO
Info Year: 1981

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Production

Not available

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Deposit

Record Type: Site
Operation Category: Past Producer
Deposit Type: placer
Operation Type: Surface-Underground
Year First Production: 1877
Discovery Year: 1877
Years of Production:
Organization:
Significant: Y
Deposit Size: L

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Physiography

Not available

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Mineral Deposit Model

Model Name: Placer Au-PGE

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Orebody

Form: channels

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Structure

Not available

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Alterations

Not available

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Rocks

Name: Gravel
Role: Host
Description: fine to coarse, poorly sorted
Age Type: Host Rock
Age Young: Quaternary

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Analytical Data

Not available

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Materials

Ore: Gold

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Comments

Comment (Geology): Bedrock is shale, limestone and quartzite.

Comment (Identification): This record incorporates material from records M242208, M242204, M242200, and M242188 which all describe individual placer deposits in the Osceola district.

Comment (Location): The Osceola Placers include over 300 claims in Dry Gulch, Mary Ann Canyon (Hogum placers), Weaver Creek, Summit Creek, Grub Gulch, Jacks Gulch and other canyons on the west slopes of the Snake Range. UTM is to near center of workings, which cover a large area.

Comment (Economic Factors): Production from the Osceola mines is estimated to have been worth about $1,923,799, which is prodominantly placer production but includes some lode production from Sacramento District mines between 1902 and 1959. The total production is estimated to have been 133,665 ounces of gold, and 129,651 ounces of silver.

Comment (Workings): The placer channels were worked by sinking or drifting and sluicing in pre-1908 days. Ditch and flume lines were constructed bringing water from Baker and Lehman creeks; and another from Williams, Pine, Shingle, Ridge, and Willard creeks; dragline scrapers, old shafts, washing plant. The Hogum placers were worked with a portable placer machine in 1933-1934. Tunnels range from 50 to 350 ft in length. Some underground work has been done on each of the claims. The Gold Hill tunnel was 309 ft long to the south. On one side of the same claim is a 100-ft tunnel S60W, with a 100-ft drift to the south. The June tunnel is about 240 ft long. There had been recent surface backhoe and bulldozer work done in 1981 digging pits and trenches.

Comment (Deposit): The Osceola placer deposits cover more than 1000 acres on 3-4 alluvial fans containing as much as 20 million cubic yards of material. Placer deposits occur in channels buried under material of the alluvial fan below the mouths of the canyons. They usually occur in a stratum overlying a so-called cement, or false bedrock at several levels. Sampling in 1935 identified 7 channels averaging 2 miles long and 60 ft wide. The depth of the gold-bearing gravel averages 30 ft. Gold is disseminated through the gravels, but the principal pay streak is near bedrock. The source of the gold was the lode deposits in Cambrian quartzites especially on the ridge west and south of Dry Gulch.

Comment (Commodity): Ore Materials: free gold

Comment (Development): The Osceola placer deposits were discovered about 1877, a fewyearsafter the lode gold deposits of the district were discovered. Although most of the placer gold was fine grained, a 25-pound gold nugget was found in Dry Gulch in 1877, the largest gold nugget ever recovered from a Nevada placer operation. Placers were worked by hand until the early 1880s when the most important claims were consolidated and the Osceola Placer Mining Company was organized to work the ground by hydraulicking and sluicing. They constructed 2 ditches about 34 miles long at a cost of $200,000, and hydraulicking continued until about 1900. In 1932, 100 men were employed working the placer deposits. In 1935 the 417-acre Hampton Placer in Dry Gulch was sampled and worked by Wagner Gold Placer Co. using 2 dragline scrapers and a washing plant. In the early days, a large area at the upper end of Weaver Creek, on the east side of the divide, was worked by Chinese. In 1932, an attempt was made to work the gravels adjacent to the creek by sluicing. Gravel was excavated and transported to the sluice by a small dragline scraper. Operations were hampered by large boulders and water on the bedrock. Operations here had diminished by 1935 at the time of the large operations on the other side of the divide. A fire nearly leveled the town in the 1940s, and placer mining was sporadic after that time. Mining activity in the district was renewed about 1980. Placer gold was being produced in 1981 on Weaver Creek, where a large backhoe and bulldozer were being used to feed a trammel, followed by screens and riffles. In 1981, Goldwinn Resources acquired an option to buy 33 1/3% of the old Solomon placer property, with Western Consolidated Mines of Denver CO, with Teck Corp as operator. Target date for production was then March, 1981. Placer mining continues to be done on a small scale in the district today.

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References

Reference (Deposit): Copeland, R.W., 1975, Osceola Placer Project: NBMG district file 335, item 11, 12

Reference (Deposit): Weeks, F.B., 1908, USGS Bull 340, p. 117-133

Reference (Deposit): Vanderburg, W.O., 1936, NBMG Bull 27, p. 167-173.

Reference (Deposit): Johnson, M.G., 1973, USGS Bull 1356, p. 93-95

Reference (Deposit): USBM, 1983, MILS Data.

Reference (Deposit): USGS, 1982, MRDS Data.

Reference (Deposit): Terra Data, 1980, A Mineral Inventory of the Schell Resource Area, Ely district, Nevada: prepared for BLM.

Reference (Deposit): Long, K.R., DeYoung, J.H., Jr., and Ludington, S.D., 1998, Database of significant deposits of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc in the United States; Part A, Database description and analysis; part B, Digital database: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 98-206, 33 p., one 3.5 inch diskette.

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Nevada Gold

Nevada has a total of 368 distinct gold districts. Of the of those, just 36 are major producers with production and/or reserves of over 1,000,000 ounces, 49 have production and/or reserves of over 100,000 ounces, with the rest having less than 100,000 ounces. Read more: Gold Districts of Nevada.