Ontario Mineral Inventory

Ontario Geological Survey
Permanent Link to this Record: MDI52A04NW00003

Record: MDI52A04NW00003

General

Commodities

Primary Commodities: Silver

Secondary Commodities: Copper, Zinc, Barite, Calcite, Fluorite, Lead

Location

Township or Area: Lybster

Latitude: 48° 14' 51.26"    Longitude: -89° 53' 11.76"

UTM Zone: 16    Easting: 285715   Northing: 5347846    UTM Datum: NAD83

Resident Geologist District: Thunder Bay South

NTS Grid: 52A04NW, 52A05SW

Point Location Description: Transfer

Location Method: AMIS Site Visit

Access Description: Proceed west on Hwy 11-17 to Hwy 588. Turn left (south) onto Hwy 588 and proceed to Hwy 593, 9.7 km past Nolalu. Turn left onto Hwy 593 and proceed 1.8 km to gravel road on left with signs “Lakehead University”. Follow gravel road for 0.6 km to a clearing and park. Trail along left side of clearing leads to shaft No. 1 at approx. 135 m.

Exploration History

1882: vein system was discovered by O. Dounais. 1885: An adit was started into the side of the hill and a shaft was sunk 7.6 m to meet the adit. By December the shaft was 9.8 m deep and a car load of ore was shipped. 1886: Silver Mountain Mine Company acquired the property. 1887: work was suspended due to litigation problems. 1888: The West End Mining Company held the property. By November, the No. 1 shaft was 24.4 m deep, with a 9.1 m drift to the east. A No. 2 shaft had been developed 213.4 m east of No. 1 and was 9.1 m deep. 1889: sinking and drifting was continued on the property. A new road to the mine was completed in September. Shipments were made up to December. 1890: In February, winzes and crosscuts were being developed on the property. In August, the property was sold to E.F. Drake of St. Paul, Minnesota, who represented a syndicate. At this time, there was a steam hoisting and pumping plant, and 20 buildings on the property. The No. 1 shaft was 68.7 m deep. At 75 feet, levels were driven east and west on the vein for 53.3 m and 30.5 m. AT 140 feet, the second level was drifted east and west for 22.9 and 15.2 m. The No. 2 shaft was 21.3 m deep, with drifts east and west of 38.1 m each. 1890: The No. 3 shaft was 15.2 m deep, and the No. 4 was 4.6 m deep. Some minor crosscuts had been done, yet no stoping had yet been done. 1891-92: H.M Nichols purchased the Badger, Porcupine, and West End Silver Mountain properties. The No. 2 shaft was 32.0 m deep. The mine was closed in May. 1898: The property was leased from the St. Paul Syndicate by Mr. Wiley and Mr. Shear. A stamp mill was being erected in September. 1899: the mine was owned by the West End Mining Company of St. Paul, Minnesota. 1899-1902: Development work continued. The No. 1 shaft was 45.7 m and abandoned due to water infill. The No. 2 shaft was more than 45.7 m deep, and had a total of 4 levels. Level 1 was 10.7 m deep and had been drifted 50 m east and 38.7 m west. Level 2 was 18.3 m deep and was drifted 114.3 m east and 64.6 m west. Level 3 was 27.4 m deep and drifted 67.6 m east and 139 m west. Level 4 was 36.6 m deep, with 111.9 m of drifting west. A lot of stoping was done from the No. 2 shaft. Many winzes were sunk between level 2 and 3. Shaft No. 4 had been abandoned. 1901: the Consolidated Mines Company of Lake Superior Ltd. acquired the property. 1903: a fire in August shut down operations. 1906-11: Hanson Consolidated Silver Mining and Milling Company Ltd. acquired the property. Underground development continued. The mine was kept pumped out after 1909. 1919: The Mining Corporation of Canada sent a shipment of silver from the mine. 1924: the property was optioned by Tyee Stucco Works Company. The vein material was mined, hand-sorted, and shipped from Silver Mountain Station to Manitoba for use as a dressing on stucco work, the coarsely crystalline calcite of the gangue being the material particularly desired. 1948: McWilliams Beardmore Mines acquired the property and extended tunnels, stoping and drifting 64 m. 1950: operations were suspended. 1951-52: Homer Yellowknife Mines acquired the property and attempted to dewater the mine, lowering the water in the No. 2 shaft 19.8 m. 3 DDH totalling 1000 feet were drilled near the No. 3 shaft. 1954: Jem Exploration Company optioned the property and conducted diamond drilling.

Assessment Work on File

Geology

Province: Southern

Formation Group: Animikie Group

Geological Age: Paleoproterozoic  

Lithology

Lithology Comments

Feb 07, 2018 (Therese Pettigrew) - Silver Mountain is a mesa capped by a diabase sill, the erosion remnants of which vary from 0.6-30.5 m in thickness. Beneath the sills are nearly flat-lying Animikie shales more than 30.5 m thick. A fault zone striking east and dipping between 80 and 85 degrees on the north crosses the mesa. The rocks on the north side show a downthrow varying between 19.8-24.4 m relative to those on the south. The fault zone follows a depression averaging 30.5 m in width and in which there is an extensive deposit of drift. The fissures along the fault zone have been cemented with vein material. In the diabase along the top of the mesa, a simple vein up to 1.8 m in width occurs. In the Animikie shales, the vein material occurs as breccia cement and in a tangle of veins, some of which are a few feet wide, but the majority are only a few inches wide and are distributed irregularly through a zone the width of which varies between 3-30.5 m. The vein system has been traced for a mile along an east direction where it crosses the mesa, for about half a mile along a west-northwest direction down the western flank of the mesa, and for about half a mile along a NE direction down the slope on the eastern side of the mesa (Tanton, 1931).

Mineralization

Mineralization Comments

Feb 07, 2018 (Therese Pettigrew) - The vein material consists of the following minerals: calcite, barite, amethystine, smoky, and white quartz, green and purple fluorite, sphalerite, galena, pyrite, chalcopyrite, native silver, and argentite. The most abundant of the vein minerals are calcite and quartz; they are intimately associated and occur throughout the greater part of the vein system. Where fissure fillings are more than a foot wide, calcite predominates over all other constituents. Barite occurs, in wide fissure fillings, as coarsely crystalline seams up to a foot in width and several yards in length. Such seams have been observed only in the upper part of the vein system lying in or near diabase. Fluorite occurs along the walls of veins as discontinuous seams of irregular width, commonly a few feet or yards long and an inch or so wide. The seams are more abundant along the walls of veins less than a foot wide than in wider veins, and fluorite is absent from most of the wide veins. In some veins green and purple varieties of fluorite are interbanded in bands averaging one-tenth inch in width and roughly paralleling the walls of the vein, but in some seams one or other variety is present alone. A dark purple, almost black, variety, rare in the district, occurs near the east end of the vein system as exposed in mining location R 54. Galena and sphalerite are sparsely disseminated through the greater part of the vein system. Small local concentrations occur in intimate association with fluorite in seams commonly less than an inch wide along the marginal part of some veins. Chalcopyrite occurs in very small amount in some of the small concentrations of galena and sphalerite. Pyrite occurs in small amount along the middle of some veins and as an incrustation on calcite and amethyst in the walls of vugs (Tanton, 1931). In the 1984 visit by OGS staff to the site, a rich pocket of argentite and native silver was discovered near the bottom of the trench at shaft No. 2. The silver mineralization is located near the margin of the vein in association with bands of calcite, barite and green and purple fluorite. Acanthite occurs along cleavage planes in calcite, in tiny fractures, as dense dendrites and associated with sphalerite in massive bands up to 2 cm wide. Native silver is much less abundant, occurring in patches and as tiny dendritic neeles. In a few samples, native silver is concentrated in thin foil-like patches up to 2 cm in diameter. Sample GCP-84-358 returned an assay of 0.03 opt Au and 574.8 opt Ag.

Mineral Record Details

References

Mono - Silver cobalt calcite vein deposits of Ontario

Publication Number: MDC010 Page: 65  Date: 1968

Author: Sergiades A.O.

Publisher Name: Ontario Dept. of Mines

Location:

Publication - Fort William and Port Arthur, and Thunder Cape Map-area, Thunder Bay District, Ontario; Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 167

Publication Number: GSC Memoir 167 Page: 115-117  Date: 1931

Author: Tanton, T.L.

Publisher Name: Geological Survey of Canada

Location: https://doi.org/10.4095/100799

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For detailed information regarding this mineral record please contact the Thunder Bay South Resident Geologist District Office