Alaska gold... Black Hills style!

        These past two weeks have been interesting… as flagrantly portrayed by lack of a blog!

        I had prepared a blog on an interesting situation in the Tinton region, waiting to update it until proper paperwork was filed. We also had an inquiry about a similar claim location situation and did a bunch of research on that area.

        This morning I was checking in with my daughter and she was filling me in on the season opener of “Alaska Gold.” 

        The irony of the show was that it closely paralleled our recent activities; legal technicalities that present problems for claim/lease holders.

        If you haven’t seen “Alaska Gold,” you might have read an earlier blog discussing last year’s season… greenhorns taking on a mining project.  We don’t have cable or satellite here, so my daughter encapsulated the season opener by telling me that the greenhorn group ended up missing a lease payment, proceeded to mine and were informed they no longer have a lease which has been picked up by another party.

        This paralleled so closely with what we have discovered in the Black Hills recently.  Several undisputed claims in the Black Hills have been found to be “inactive,” a term used by the Bureau of Land Management when claimants fail to maintain claims and the paperwork entailed.

        The first instance was a group of highly acclaimed locations well known in the Northern Black Hills, originally staked in the 1900’s by what we are going to refer to as NMF (noted mining family).

        As the generations developed, the claims were pretty well established until the late 1970s, when a lot of claimholders were confused by a dictate from BLM that $100 assessment had to be paid for each claim.  This situation leveled off by declaring a small miner maintenance waiver.

        The NMF, in the meantime, failed to file necessary paperwork and ended up contesting a BLM decision to declare their claims invalid.

        Someone (we’ll call them PS for pretty smart) tuned into this situation and staked a large claim encompassing multiple NMF claims.  The NMFs then re-located their claims over the top of PS.

        Now we don’t know the further detail of this situation, but the NMF technically no longer have their historic claims.

        Oh, and while we were at it we managed to find a gap in the NMF and PS claim blocks that we were happy to stake!



Newly discovered adit.

         A phone call Monday focused on another area with a very similar situation!  What was perceived as an existing claim in the Central Hills, researched out to be a claim post from another claim in another section!  There was no valid claim on a property which has seen extensive placer mining the past few years… all with permission from the non-existant claimholder!

        So the lesson might be… if you have a claim, stay on top of maintaining it.  If you want a claim, do the research and you’ll probably find one!  Better yet, we can research it for you, help you locate it and advise you on procedure!

        Just to give you an idea of what you might find, we realized 60+ acres of prime, unclaimed placer ground with these two sessions of research.

        We’ve been a little negligent with congratulations on acquisition of claims to Wendell for three and Mary two new claims, Jody for three, Glenn on a placer and a lode.  Happy prospecting!

Geologic anomaly...

        We’ve talked about the interesting geology of the Black Hills – so diverse that university geology departments throughout the United States schedule field camps for students to this area.

        Bob was mentored by several mine geologists who had extensive local knowledge, having written their thesis on anamolies they found interesting.

        I had reported earlier that we recently staked a claim in the Tinton area and found an unexpected bonus of an adit (man-made cave) on the property.

        We took the grandkids and my daughter (a geology student) back to do a little further exploration Monday, all of them having a “day off” from school.

        My intention was to dig a little to further expose the partially collapsed adit.  Bob and Robey (10) took off walking to further explore.

        I started in, removing some larger rocks near the entrance, shoveling debris out of the way as I went.  I probably wasn’t too far into the operation when I removed some branches in the way and looked up to notice rounded river rock between layers of rock in the face.  My daughter, in the meantime, had discovered the same thing a little to my left!

        I’ve learned patience, kindof, and proceeded to continue clearing for ½ hour or so, noticing that certain layers of the rock contained river-rock.

        I was pleased to hear Bob’s voice as they returned from their hike, and removed a small shovelful of the rounded rock, went to meet them and told him I had found it between layers.  He gave me kindof a weird look, so I said, “come on, you just have to see this!”

        Bob says it appears to be an ancient stream conglomerate with two fractures (well defined in photo) coming to meet at the entry point of the adit.

        He could see that gravel had been forced between layers of silt stone, and cemented as time passed.  Obviously this is a rich part of the ancient stream that came across the Tinton, Cement Ridge and Negro Hill area and proceeds to go down Bear Gulch and probably forks near Bear Town Hill.  One leg of the ancient stream goes east down Potato Gulch and the other north following the Bear Gulch drainage.

        The adit was at the head of what we call Sloan Gulch, which has yielded small to medium-sized nuggets.  This deposit should be interesting to crush down and evaluate the gravel bands within this deposit.



What appears to be a pillar of ore left for support...



       

         He said this doesn’t appear to be a pre-Cambrian conglomerate.  It appears to be a localized flood event that created this conglomerate.

        We’re excited to test the layers of gravel, especially in the fracture area.  Previous workings indicate they ran all the gravels, evidenced by at least 6-8 inches of “gravel” in the tailings pile; that’s only as far as we dug.

        Access is our first issue; we are walking in so very limited as to what equipment we can carry.  The closest water is down the gulch in a swampy area. We will probably file a Plan of Operation with the U.S. Forest Service to allow for motorized access.

An investment

　
A really bleak weather weekend has us prospecting from our desktop instead of on foot!
We don’t mind the weather… a lightning strike in the foothills near our home started a fire this week. Response was quick, but we’re glad this weather arrived to dampen any further sparks the lightning and wind might have fired!



X's mark sections blanketed with lode claims.

 We’re taking on a tedious task of choosing prominent gold producing areas, researching existing claims and looking for available claims. As we progress on this project, we’re seeing a considerable amount of property in the Northern Hills being staked by companies blanketing sections with lode claims. Several sections we were interested in are already staked.

Out intention is to sget ahead of those companies… one really valuable placer claim was staked this past week by a friend. The placer is only one aspect, however, as companies have no compunction about staking a lode claim right over a placer claim! We are recommending a lode claim over this friend’s placer as it looks to have gold-bearing quartz and schist.

Another placer claim we staked this week, in that same general area, surprised us while walking the boundaries with a well-established adit into quartzite and shale, which is prompting us to consider a lode over this placer also!  A return visit Monday sparked a geologic discussion that we will share with you later this week!

So why all this anxiety? History is repeating itself. Miners rushed to the Black Hills in 1876 to stake their claim. What they found when they got here was that they were too late, the best claims were gone! Mining companies then proceeded to buy those claims out, one at a time, until the major mining companies owned mineral rights to pretty much the entire Northern Hills! That situation cleared up a few years ago when a major mining company dropped huge blocks of claims before they left the region.

Now the average placer miner just wants some place to go, pan some gold and enjoy the forest. Those opportunities are disappearing fast in the Northern Hills. Once a section is staked with lode claims, the placer opportunities are gone. You might also want to think about it as investing in some mineral rights that would provide recreation AND might lead to negotiations with a company interested in lode mining!

        The fall season always brings mixed feelings… beautiful colors and the crisp mountain air are a joy.

        The flip side, of course, is that winter approaches and so does hunting season… so wear bright colors out there prospecting! 

        We ventured back to the Keystone area Saturday and were reminded of the legend of the Holy Terror.

        First of all, did you know that what you see from the road in Historic Keystone is not the Holy Terror, but the Keystone Mine?

        So the story goes that Franklin’s daughter discovered gold-bearing float on the surface and he proceeded to develop the Holy Terror, thought to be named after his wife Jenny who often had to “escort” him home from the local bars.

        Did you know also, that the town of Keystone is located on the site of a large placer deposit?  It was mined out and the historic town located on the site.

        (More recent photos of the Holy Terror on our web site at http://)www.blackhillsgoldmines.com

        A lot of the rich placer area has been removed from mineral entry, we think probably because of its proximity to Mt. Rushmore.

        We spent a considerable amount of time discussing the politics of mining with a new-found friend at Keystone.  It is a tangled web of federal and state politics, with a pinch of local politics thrown in for good measure.  We do have a mining company that has expressed interest in our lode properties, but whether they decide to brave this frontier of politics will be interesting!

        Meanwhile, almost daily we have e-mails expressing an interest in placer claims.  To this end, we ventured to the Tinton area Sunday to explore some open ground.  It is a double mission, having found a claim for a friend who needs direction to his new prospect! 

        Iron Creek up through Tinton was a vista of color, dwindling to past-peak as we approached upper Spearfish Canyon.  There were tons of cars at Roughloch Falls, but the colors were much better further down the canyon.

        Keep contacting us for claims…. Time runs out as the winter months approach!