Wild Horse Claim
Garfield County, Utah
Gold
PLACER, 40 acres
$10,000
History
The red rock canyonlands of southern Utah have been tied to treasure for centuries. Rumors of the ancient Aztec treasure of Montezuma and lost Spanish and Mormon mines are numerous. Butch Cassidy and his gang of outlaws hid in this wild remote country, then known as the Robber’s Roost, and his graffiti can still be found by those who know where to look. And within this legendary landscape are the Henry Mountains, the last mountain range to be mapped in the continental United States. These snow-capped peaks rise to elevations greater than 11,500 feet above the Colorado Plateau and remain relatively unknown and nearly unexplored.
This area of southern Utah was the scene of several gold rushes to the lower Colorado River basin in the 1880’s and 1890’s after the discovery of widespread flour gold placers on river bars on the Colorado, San Juan, Green and Dirty Devil Rivers. Gold on the Colorado River around Hite was traced upstream for 40 miles along North Wash to Crescent Creek, draining the east slope of the Henry Mountains. By 1890 prospectors began searching for the source of the Crescent Creek gold in the head of the stream on the east flank of Mt. Ellen. They discovered a rich gold-bearing seam they called the Bromide Mine. In the first few months of mining with hand tools in 1893, the Bromide vein yielded 400 ounces of gold. The mine would go on to produce 84,000 ounces of gold.
Beginning in Bromide Basin, a small alluvial fan of gravel known as the Eagle Bench spills out over the red slickrock sandstones over an area of about 2 ½ square miles along Crescent Creek. In places the Eagle Bench gravels contain important amounts of gold derived from erosion of veins in Bromide Basin. The bench gravels have been heavily sampled over the years and it has been estimated that the entire alluvial fan averages 0.012 to 0.021 oz/yard while some paystreaks contain up to 0.1 oz/yard.
Where the thick bench gravels have been eroded along modern dry gulches and Crescent Creek itself, the gold is highly concentrated and can average upwards of 0.5 oz/yard in paystreaks, with some test samples on bedrock yielding upwards of 1.5 oz/yard. The gold is fairly coarse and easily recovered, with rice-sized grains being common. In recent years, some reports of small nuggets the size of peanuts have come from the Crescent Creek area.
Like most desert placers, the absence of water has prevented commercial placering at Crescent Creek, although a few thousand ounces have likely been produced from two small placer cuts and by numerous individuals since 1890. One of the first reports of placer production was by a group of four prospectors from Colorado in 1891 that panned on the creek for three weeks and recovered about 25 ounces each before being forced to leave to replace their supplies. The spring of 1893 saw heavy activity on the creek, with as many as 300 miners. As a testament to the richness of some spots around Crescent Creek, a prospector named Tom Webber recovered 30 ounces of gold using only a pan in three weeks in March 1893.
In the 1890’s, J.W. Wilson worked a crew of men with three primitive dry washers, producing about ¼ of an ounce per day per man. In 1893, some lessees on his placer mined 40 ounces per week with hand methods. The gold was fairly course and small nuggets weighing 0.3 to 0.5 grams were common.
In 1910, Cornelius Ekker and Frank Lawler began producing gold in a commercial way from their claims on Crescent Creek and this work continued in a casual way by their families into the 1980’s from two mining locations. At least 800 ounces of gold were produced from one of their placer cuts in “Million Dollar Gulch”.
Geology and Potential
Placer claims at Crescent Creek are highly coveted and rarely become available. Some of the core groups of claims have remained in the hands of the same families for over 80 years! Outwest Mining is pleased to offer two placer claims on the Eagle Bench with excellent geologic potential.
The southern 20-acre Wild Horse Claim contains 2,700 linear feet of gulch bottom entirely on and within the Eagle Bench gravels. These gulches drain an area of 160 acres upstream on the alluvial fan that represents some of the richest known portions of bench gravel containing all of the historic placer mines and bulk sampling areas. All of the gold eroded from this area is washed down the dry gulch on the placer claim. The claim is located just 1/3 mile from the hydraulic cut known as “Million Dollar Gulch”, worked by the Ekker family.
The northern 20-acre Wild Horse Claim contains 2,800 feet of gulch bottom that drains a similar area on the Eagle Bench, however the bench gravels have been entirely reworked and the claim is dominated by red Entrada Sandstone bedrock with excellent bedrock gold traps. Select pans of gravel cleaned off the sandstone bedrock commonly yield 10 to 50 flakes per pan and some small pickers.
