Description
The Mercury One Property (“Property”) is in the Schell Creek Range, White
Pine County, east-central Nevada, USA. The Property is structurally complex, as
it is cut by numerous large-scale normal faults with northeast and northwest orientations. Gold and silver mineralization typically occurs in iron-stained, intensely
silicified breccias (jasperoids) spatially associated with faults. Carbonate rocks are
the dominant host rocks for mineralization on the Property. Where mineralization is
most intense, the calcite has been stripped out of the carbonate and replaced by silica.
The Property area was explored for silver in the 1870s with small scale silver mining between 1871 and 1874. In the latter 20th century (late 1980s and early 1990s),
Freeport McMoRan and Coeur Mining drilled 32 holes for shallow, Carlin-type, disseminated gold deposits. The brecciated fault-hosted deposit type was not their exploration target, and therefore both companies ceased exploration on the Property.
After identifying the high potential of the area, Mercury Exploration Nevada Inc.
(“MExN”) staked 182 contiguous, unpatented mining claims, extending 9.5 km from
just south of Schellbourne Pass to Spring Gulch to the north. Work completed in 2018
and 2019 by MExN and C&M Consultants included: detailed interpretation of linear
features from aerial photographs, collection of 1,654 XRF spectrometer analyses from
Freeport and Coeur drill core and cuttings, relogging of six core holes, geological field
mapping, and analyses of 355 surface rock and 262 soil samples. These programs
identified precious metal-bearing zones in the Property’s north and south areas. Exploration highlights are a 900m long brecciated, silicified, iron oxidized lithological
contact zone in the north, and a 160 m by 120 m area with extensive brecciation and
iron oxidation in the south.
The abundance of mineralized monomictic and polymictic breccias observed
on the Property is similar to the breccia-hosted mineralization at Barrick’s recently
discovered Fourmile Deposit in the Goldrush Camp of the Battle Mountain-Eureka
Gold Trend. The Fourmile Deposit contains a deep high-grade gold breccia-hosted
body that is associated with high-angle, through-going district wide faulting. The similarity in the appearance of the breccia textures between the Mercury One Property
and the Fourmile Deposit, and the direct association of the breccia bodies to largescale faults, support the potential for deeper precious metal-bearing breccias along
faults on the Property.
