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Alaska Miners Association Phone: 907-563-9229 Fax: 907-563-9225 ama@alaskaminers.org www.alaskaminers.org ELKO / Mining Expo Phone: 775-738-4091 Fax: 775-738-2420 jennifer@elkocva.com www.exploreelko.com WorldWide Drilling Resource ® is proud to be a member of these mining associations. Northwest Mining Association Phone: 509-624-1158 Fax: 509-623-1241 nwma_info@nwma.org Women in Mining 866-537-9694 wim@womeninmining.org 55 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® AUGUST 2013 California’s Alleghany Mining District by Harry W. Short Engineering Geologist Gold was first discovered in the Alleghany Mining District by a group of Hawaiian sailors in May 1850. The creek where the gold was discovered flows below Alleghany. It was named Kanaka which means “person” in Hawaiian. In 1853, a group of miners from Allegheny, Pennsylvania, named the town Alleghany with an “a” rather than an “e”. In the early years, the town was referred to as Alleghanytown and Jericho. Many towns sprang up, and the miners often named them after places they had left behind when they came to California seeking their fortunes. The first miners worked in creeks and rivers sluicing and panning for gold nuggets. They soon discovered rich gold- bearing gravels also existed in the old, dry river channels. The first underground gold mines in the Alleghany District were placer mines called drift mines. In the mid-1850s, the first gold-bearing quartz veins were discovered in the Alleghany Mining District in quartz veins rock ledges exposed on the ground surface. The miners who followed these quartz veins deep into the earth to extract the gold- bearing quartz became hard rock miners. The district is underlain by north- west-striking metamorphic beds of the Calaveras Formation. In the vicinity of Alleghany, the formation is divided into individual groups: Blue Canyon Slate, Tightner Formation, Kanka Formation, Relief Quartzite, Cape Horn Slate, and Delhi Formation. These rocks have been intruded in many instances by diorite dikes and serpentine in fault zones. Mariposite is found adjacent to the ser- pentine, and the higher ridges in the area are capped by recent volcanic flows of andesite and basalt. The Sixteen to One world-famous hard rock mine in the Alleghany area was discovered in 1896, and has pro- duced over 1.1 million troy ounces of gold. The mine’s name is derived from the consistent amount of 16 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold. Alleghany became the hub of the District primarily due to the presence of the Sixteen to One Mine. The first lode quartz mining in the District was in the mid-1850s at the German Bar and Ireland Mines. A num- ber of veins on Kanaka Creek like the Twenty One, El Dorado, and Oriental, were located and prospected in the 1860s, and the Tightner Mine was lo- cated in 1891. Production from the lode mines in the District began to surpass that of the drift mines in the late 1890s. Sidney Norman published a compilation in October 1932, listing a total gold pro- duction of 1.77 million troy ounces from the 28 mines in the Alleghany District. Current production figures are not avail- able at this time. Harry Harry Short may be contacted via e-mail at admin@ worldwidedrillingresource.com Mine ore cart from the Sixteen to One Mine. -32* &; = 3'.0* 1&.0 /('.768440< <&-33 (31 &00 86 35 9.6.7 86 &7 .57 .,,*5 2*: &2) 86*) '. 76 1&7 5 .; &2) 67**0 '3)< 7 0 & 6 3 4 ( 3 :35/39*5 7337- &2) '87732 '.76 *&5 0&: 855.(&2* &2) -314 1. 0 06 +35 (*1*27 1*7&0 &2) (31436.7* 408,6 5&, '.76 &2) /*00< '.76 !$" ! % # ! ! # Thank you to WorldWide Drilling Resource ® for acting as a media sponsor of #ISARC2013. [via Twitter]