Gold Lake Claim
San Juan County, Colorado
Gold and Amythest
LODE, 20.66 acres
$7,000
History
The Gold Lake Claim is located in the South Silverton Mining District, which yielded over 878,000 ounces of gold and 25 million ounces of silver between 1878 and 1957.
For decades, prospectors had ignored the area at the head of Mountaineer Creek. The basin was thought to be unfavorable for gold deposits because it existed to the southwest of a major fault, beyond which nothing of value had ever been found.
However, in September 1898, L.A. Phillips investigated an iron-stained outcrop next to a small lake at the head of the creek. This little hill is composed of white rhyolite porphyry heavily stained by gashes of iron oxide. Phillips was astonished to find a vuggy rotten mass of quartz in the outcrop that was literally seamed together with coarse wire gold! He panned some of the dirt from this outcrop and recovered nearly an ounce of gold wires, ragged leaves, and small jagged nuggets of gold. Phillips quickly staked claims and named his discovery claim the Gold Lake, in honor of the small picturesque lake next to his fabulous discovery. Early snows in the fall of 1898 prevented Phillips from doing much with his claim but in July 1899 he and four other men sunk a shaft on the discovery outcrop and shipped all of the rock, which yielded over 40 ounces of gold (over 7 oz/ton).
The shaft was sunk to a depth of just 25 feet when the water table was encountered, which prevented them from sinking further. The men could not afford the cost of pumping equipment and so crosscut tunnels were driven at the base of the hill to drain the shaft. One of these tunnels encountered three high-grade gold-quartz veins ranging from three inches to three feet wide. Many fabulous wire gold specimens were saved, including one nest of wire gold the size of a bird’s egg weighing several ounces. Seven tons of hand-sorted ore collected while driving this tunnel were shipped, yielding 26.25 ounces of gold, or 3.75 oz/ton. All three veins were subsequently found on the surface and were excavated to depths up to 10 feet in trenches. Some of the ore produced from the richest of these veins, the Bumblebee, averaged 14 oz/ton gold and produced many fine specimens of coarse free gold filling vugs in the rhyolite.
In 1903, the Silver Lake Company took a lease on the claim for $21,000, the modern equivalent of $686,000 USD. Although the geology was favorable, the flat topography in the bottom of the basin meant that the mine could only be worked in a commercial way through the construction of a major tunnel that was deemed too ambitious.
In early 1907, the property was sold to a group of Silverton and Denver mining men, backed by New York capitalists, for $25,000, or the modern equivalent of $755,000. The new owners found new additional streaks of ore up to four feet wide averaging 1 oz/ton Au with irregular and randomly distributed pockets of ore running 2 to 3 oz/ton Au. However, without a major drainage tunnel to deal with the shallow groundwater, the development never advanced beyond selective mining of high grade gold pockets, which ceased in 1911.
Gold Potential
Given the scale of the surface workings and reported underground workings, it is likely several hundred ounces of gold were produced from the Gold Lake Claim over the years, mostly in the form of small lots of ore with significant coarse free gold in the form of wires, leaves and small nuggets. Some crystalline gold masses weighing up to several ounces were reported.
The gold is found in irregular vuggy silicified masses and decomposed clay-rich seams in the body of rhyolite just north of the lake. Much of the surface is covered in rubble and talus and there is an excellent possibility that many additional pockets and seams of rich free gold-bearing ore exist on this knoll.
During property examination, Outwest geologists found two rock samples containing visible free gold that would have been readily detectable with a metal detector. The potential for a skilled metal detectorist here is high to discover more significant prized crystalline gold specimens.
Pan tests of decomposed rhyolite collected over the entire hill contain ubiquitous free gold in small grains and occasional ragged pieces up to several millimeters in diameter. Water for processing dirt is located just feet from the historic trenched veins in Gold Lake.
Amythest Potential
The decomposed rhyolite surrounding the open cuts is full of irregular vuggy pockets and voids that are locally lined with bright transparent quartz crystals and rare skeletal fenster amethyst crystals, scepters, phantom twin crystals and doubly terminated crystals. These forms of quartz crystals are unique and fairly uncommon.
“Fenster” is the German word for window. While it was crystallizing, a fenster crystal’s edges grew faster than the rest of the crystal face, creating the appearance of triangular windows with raised borders. A casual search of the surface talus during claim staking produced several excellent fenster amethyst crystals with deep purple tips and many smaller crystals with a pale purple color. Some attractive display pieces consisting of large crystal clusters projecting into open voids could be dug from the intact rhyolite. There are only a few consistent sources of amethyst in Colorado and the Gold Lake Claim is the only known locality with fenster features.
