Phoenix Claim
Albany County, Wyoming
Gold and Cobalt
LODE, 20.66 acres
$8,000
History
In the spring of 1868, rumors began to circulate among prospectors that gold had been discovered on Douglas Creek in the Medicine Bow Mountains southwest of Laramie. Prospectors poured into the mountain range and found that Douglas Creek and most of its tributaries contained rich gold placers yielding some large nuggets over one ounce in weight. Prospectors filtered in and out of the camp for decades as all of the other great mining camps of the West were discovered and boomed, although many placer miners stayed in the district to wash between ¼ and ½ ounce of gold per day using primitive methods.
Gold in the placers was coarse and rough and occasionally contained attached quartz indicating it had not traveled far from its motherlode. Lode claims were first filed on gold-quartz veins on the banks of Douglas Creek in 1876 and several mines collectively known as the Keystone Mining District went on to achieve a modest gold production of 1,000 to 8,000 ounces of gold each over the next few years at grades >1 oz/ton.
The Phoenix Claim covers a significant historic gold mine located approximately one mile southwest of the town of Keystone. The history and original name of this mine was not documented, although it contains several buildings and a dump larger than most in the district estimated to contain 8,000-10,000 tons of rock.
Outwest performed a detailed archival study for the past several years to rediscover the history of this forgotten mine. This work has proven that this mine is almost certainly the old Virginius Mine. The Virginius was discovered by a prospector named Victor Carlin in 1877, who found a narrow fissure vein at the surface only four inches wide that carried “an immense amount” of free gold. Every first-sized piece of ore dug from the vein at surface yielded 0.038 ounces of gold, or almost 40 oz/ton gold. Carlin once extracted a fourteen-pound specimen of boxwork vein quartz that was pounded up in a hand mortar and yielded 60 ounces of gold, or almost 30% gold! At a depth of 12 feet the vein widened to one foot and still averaged 1 to 3 oz/ton gold.
The claim was purchased by F.W. Marriott, Tom Hale and David McCullagh and developed to a depth of 85 feet. The mine was then purchased by industrialists from Chicago led by C.F. Crysler in 1894 for the modern equivalent of $780,000. The ore shoot on the vein at the 85-ft depth averaged three feet wide and $10 to $150 per ton in gold, or 0.50 to 7.5 oz/ton. A visiting mining engineer to the Virginius in 1894 collected seven samples of ore from the dump that contained between 0.38 and 12.85 oz/ton gold. The average of all seven samples was 5.41 oz/ton gold!
In 1896, the owners began sinking a new shaft with an intended depth of as much as 300 feet. By the end of 1896, the shaft was down over 200 feet. The owners also purchased the old 30-stamp mill of the great Keystone Mine and moved it to the Virginius. Some ore milled through stamp amalgamation in 1896 yielded $25 per ton (1.25 oz/ton) from a streak of ore 26 inches wide. After 1896, the Crysler Syndicate focused their efforts on development of other mining properties and closed down the Virginius.
Geology
Lode mines in the Keystone Mining District have remained virtually unexplored, despite the presence of excellent historic mining grades and common high-grade ore on many mining dumps. A few of the mines contain an unusual metal assemblage of gold, copper, silver, cobalt, nickel and platinum group metals, making these ores attractive for modern explorers. Metals like cobalt and palladium present in these ores are in high demand in the 21st Century and are considered critical and strategic.
