MINING HISTORY
the Lovitt Mine. However, GoldBelt, required additional financing to maintain its joint venture position. Breakwater Resources Limited provided that financing. Breakwater gained control of GoldBelt in 1982 and became a full partner (49%) with Asamera Minerals. (Jewett, R., Robertson, D.B., and Callaghan, R., 1995, Ott, 1986). In 1983, the Asamera- Breakwater joint venture initiated a development program, which became the Cannon Mine. By 1984, drilling identified 5,256,000 tons of 0.214 ounce per ton “reserves” (Burgoyne, A.A, 1996, Jewett, R., Robertson, D.B., and Callaghan, R., 1995; Ott, L., 1986, Power-Fardy, D., 2009, Price, B.J., 2007). Asamera subsequently leased the Lovitt Mine and Tenneco’s holdings in 1985. They performed a resource evaluation in March 1986, which indicated a potential of 2.23 million tons of 0.159 gold ounce per ton at 0.10 ounce per ton cut-off and 6.71 million tons of 0.085 gold ounce per ton at a 0.04 ounce per ton cut-off. The resource also estimated 0.860 million tons of 0.17 gold ounce per ton at a 0.10 gold ounce per ton cut-off and 1.88 million tons of 0.10 gold ounce per ton with a 0.04 gold ounce per ton cut-off for the LMC portion of the D-Reef (Burgoyne, A.A, 1996; Power-Fardy, D., 2009). In 1984, Grange Gold Corporation, which was Incorporated in 1980, obtained 26.5% shareholding of Lovitt Mining Company (Brown, L. and Gill, R., 2018, Power-Fardy, D., 2009). From 1986 to 1990 Asamera also held a lease/purchase agreement to acquire 50% of the Lovitt Mining Company shares. They reopened the D-Reef 1250 level, rehabilitated, mapped, and sampled 7000 feet of underground workings, plus completed 39,000 feet of underground diamond drilling. They also completed 15,600 feet of reverse circulation drilling from the surface and performed metallurgical analyses of the D-Reef mineraliza- tion (Burgoyne, A.A, 1996, Power-Fardy, D., 2009). When the Cannon Mine closed in 1995, Gulf Minerals, Asamera’s parent company, liquidated Asamera. Grange Gold financed LMC’s purchase of the Asamera portion of the Macbeth and Golden King patented claims and the Chisel land and claims. This uni- fied ownership of the Gold King and Macbeth property. After unifying the patented claims, Grange Gold owned only 57.8% of Lovitt Mining Company (LMC). Asamera gave their LMC shares to the minority shareholders upon their exit from the district. In 2002 LMC bought out the minority shareholders interest for $540,000 subject to a 5% net smelter royalty inter- est to former minority shareholders. The company changed its name to Lovitt Resources Incorporated (LRC). Lovitt Mining Company Incorporated, became a privately owned subsidiary of LRC (Brown, L. and Gill, R., 2018).
Property Geology and Mineralization The Lovitt Mine stratigraphy and mineralization consists
of a northwest trending belt of intercalated, arkosic sand- stone, conglomerate, and siltstone with zones of carbonized leaves, twigs, and small logs in the sandstones of the early to middle Eocene Chumstick Formation (Figure 4). A black, carbonaceous mudstone horizon referred to as the Footwall Fissure (Lovitt and Skerl, 1958) with bedding-plane-parallel deformation marks the footwall to gold mineralization. The mudstone is approximately 50 feet thick. Arkosic sandstones adjacent to the mudstone are severely dislocated producing fractures amenable to the formation of auriferous silicified, stockworks, veins, and silica flooding. A coarse conglomerate borders the eastern flank of the stratigraphy. A perlitic rhyoda- cite and minor andesite were intruded along structures (Lovitt and Skerl, 1958). The Rooster Comb rhyodacite is a surface expression of the felsic intrusive. The late-stage, post-mineral rhyodacite and hornblende andesite described by Ott, 1986, cutting the Cannon Mine stratigraphy, the perlitic rhyolite Rooster Comb, the andesite dikes at the Lovitt Mine (Lovitt
www.aipg.org Oct.Nov.Dec 2020 • TPG 7
and Skerl, 1958), and the andesite intrusive (Gill, 1984a) might represent a late stage to barren “parental magma” intruded into the Chumstick Formation after its source magma expelled the final gold bearing fluids (Kelsey, G.L., 2019).
The mineralized sedimentary rocks and Footwall Fissure dip steeply to the southwest but flatten with depth. The Footwall Fissure shear zone has an overall undulating shape along strike and down dip. Its average trend is N50W and dip of 70 degrees southwest. The Footwall Fissure contains two fault zones with parallel strike. The distance between the two faults varies from 150 feet to a single zone. The thickness of each fault strand is 5-feet to 20-feet wide. The East Footwall Fissure strand separates mineralized arkosic sediments on the west side from un-mineralized conglomerate on the east side. The fault zone is characterized by broken unaltered arkosic pods, silicified arkose, and vein fragments in a black, sheared clayey gouge suggesting reverse displacement. The latest movement along the fault zone is interpreted as post- mineralization. (Burgoyne, A.A, 1996). Two populations of bedding orientations are reported adjacent to the Footwall Fissure zone. An overall N50W strike with southwest dip forms the majority bedding orientation. However, locally between the Footwall Fissure strands bedding display a NW strike and NE dips. The shear-sense implication of a reverse in bedding dip from SW to NE may represent some late-stage normal fault displacement on the Footwall Fissure structure.
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