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Mines - Moonlight
The original
Moonlight and Northern claims were located in 1929 by
the North-Western Prospectors Syndicate, which was taken over in
1930 by North-Western Aerial Prospectors, Ltd.
The Pass, Northern,
Moonlight, and Camp located claims explored by the latter group were between 3,300 feet and 5,000 feet elevation along the west
side of Kimball Lake, a fluctuating, periodic lake near the head of American
Creek and just
east of the main spire of Mount Mitre. These claims were immediately
west of the
Virginia K group of Crown-granted claims located on the east side of
American Creek.
The area was originally reached by road from Stewart to the American Creek bridge and then by horse trail, a total of about 27 miles from Stewart.
The bridge
and trail have largely disappeared and the best approach is now by
helicopter.
Country rocks in the area are
folded Bowser siltstones with intercalated limestones, greywackes, and quartzites which are found as a narrow strip along
American Creek and Kimball Lake and overlie green Hazelton volcanic sandstones,
breccias, and tuffs. Shearing occurs along the western side of the claims at the
eastern edge of the snow and ice. Various small dykes cut all the country rocks.
Mineralization has been explored
by trenches and cuts at eight locations, revealing quartz-sulphide veins and replacement sulphide deposits in both the
Bowser and
Hazelton members.
Both northeasterly and northwesterly trending zones
occur and
the quartz-calcite stringers and veins are generally accompanied by
pyrite, galena, sphalerite, minor chalcopyrite, and scattered tetrahedrite.
Native gold wasidentified in the main northeast zone west of the lake
along the volcanic siltstone contact.
Some high-grade ore was reportedly shipped from the showings in 1935, but
there are no records to indicate amounts.
In 1937, 61.4 pounds of gold ore
from
one of the small quartz-calcite veins was shipped to the Trail smelter and assayed 387.8 ounces gold and 164.4 ounces silver per
ton.
In 1938 the property was
taken over by Napco Gold Mines, Ltd., who did a small amount of trenching
and
drove 50 feet of adit. The property was inactive until 1966 when Frontier
Exploration
Limited extended the old workings and prospected the area.
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