Silver Trail Claim
Gunnison County, Colorado
Gold and Silver
LODE, 20.66 acres
$5,000
History
The Tomichi Mining District dates from the year 1876 when the flood of prospectors arriving to the booming Leadville camp failed to find any open ground to claim. These men spread out west into Colorado’s highest mountains, the Sawatch Range, and located rich silver and gold veins. Some of the most important were located around Tomichi. The camp was originally called Argenta in tribute to the rich silver ores in the surrounding gulches, however the name was changed by the miners to Tomichi in August 1880. “Tomichi” is a local Ute word meaning “a place of rock and water”.
The Tomichi Mining District is dominated by narrow silver veins containing significant gold in places. A particularly rich belt of veins extends along the west side of Tomichi Creek for 1.5 miles from Buckhorn Gulch northward to Brittle Silver Basin. Many of these veins regularly produced ore shipments containing up to 47 oz/ton gold and thousands of oz/ton silver!
The Silver Trail vein was the primary vein explored at the historic Twin Lakes Mine and was opened by three shafts and a number of prospect pits. The vein was discovered by prospector, Fred Greiner, during the height of the rush at Tomichi in 1879-1880 and by the end of 1881 he had dug a shaft 37 feet deep. Hand-sorted ore from sinking the shaft was shipped to Leadville and averaged 700 oz/ton silver with a little gold. In 1882 a second shaft was sunk 160 feet to the northwest adjacent to his cabin to a depth of 50 feet. Some ore shipped from this shaft assayed as high as 2,000 oz/ton silver. In July 1892, Fred Greiner sold the Twin Lakes claim for $10,000 (modern equivalent of $316,000) to a group of Eastern capitalists.
Geology
Samples collected by the Colorado Geological Survey in 1913 from the two old Greiner shafts were highly mineralized in gold and silver. A single sample from the southern shaft assayed 0.24 oz/ton gold and 7.80 oz/ton silver. Three samples collected from small stockpiles of vein quartz around the northern shaft assayed respectively; 0.64 oz/ton gold and 54.70 oz/ton silver, 3.32 oz/ton gold and 163.70 oz/ton silver and 6.80 oz/ton gold and 584.70 oz/ton silver. The average of these four samples was 2.75 oz/ton Au and 202.73 oz/ton Ag!
Samples collected by Out West geologists in 2020 and 2022 from these shafts confirm the high-grade nature of the Silver Trail vein. The average of 10 typical vein samples in the dumps around the shafts was 7.75 oz/ton gold and 40 oz/ton silver. No sample contained less than 0.86 oz/ton gold and ranged up to 13.2 oz/ton gold. Silver values were commonly in excess of 50 oz/ton, with a few high-grade specimens up to 210 oz/ton silver. One specimen of rotten altered wallrock porphyry containing vugs filled with nests of wire silver assayed 882 oz/ton silver and 1.54 oz/ton gold. Samples of dump fines at the two shafts were panned, producing significant amounts of visible native silver wires and flakes and visible gold.
The Silver Trail Claim features an excellent cabin originally built by Fred Greiner in 1881 and is located just feet from the northern shaft with the bonanza grade mineralization. This cabin can serve as an excellent base camp to prospect the claim. Water for prospecting is easily obtained in the two Twin Lakes less than 100 feet from each of the shaft workings. The trace of the vein between the shafts is unprospected but very prospective for high grade ore, in addition to the high grade exposed in the two shafts. The area around the Silver Trail vein is heavily forested and frost-heave talus fields cover most of the projected strike of the vein. Four additional prospects were found during the survey of the claim that extend the potential length of the vein on surface to at least 1,400 feet.
