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THE OLD WISCONSIN GOLD MINE
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CLAIMS RICH IN GOLD AND SILVER
The site has had a number of operators over the years and supported small ‘settlements’ (in the late 1800’s, early 1900's up until about 1940) with bunkhouse, cookhouse, dining room, store-house, blacksmith shop, maintenance shed, dynamite magazine sheds and assorted buildings for a crew of about 16-men. Some of these still remain standing while others have collapsed through the rigors of time and the weight of winter snow.
They substantiated a deposit in the main zone of 400,000 tons of ore bearing an average of 4-grams of gold and 25-grams of silver per ton - many millions of dollars in value of both the gold and silver.
In basic placer mining methods used by the pioneer miners during the gold rushes, a pan is filled with crushed ore (gravel) and agitated under water. The object is to separate the heavy gold particles from the lighter detritus. The process is continued until only concentrates, which may be collected and panned again, are left. Panning is very slow and economical only in rich placers. Capacity may be increased by the use of a rocker, a shallow box supported on rockers and agitated by hand, or by sluicing. In sluicing, which is the most effective of the manual techniques, ore is shovelled into a sloping trough and water allowed to flow over it. The waste materials are carried away by the water while the concentrates are retained by riffles on the bottom of the trough.
Methods of extracting gold ore from lodes (such as the Wisconsin) are similar to those used for other metallic ores. After extraction, the ore is sorted, crushed and ground into a pulp. This is then passed over plates treated with mercury and the gold amalgamated. The amalgam is then retorted to separate the gold from the mercury. The pulp (which may contain 10-70% of the gold after passing over amalgamating plates), is concentrated, commonly by floating in oil, and treated in the cyanide process. In this process, gold is dissolved out of the ore by a dilute cyanide solution and subsequently precipitated, usually by contact with zinc.
GOLD FACTS Pure gold is called 24 Karat or 24K. The 'K' is for 'karat' which is a measure of the purity of gold. 'Carat' is different however; it measures the weight of diamonds. 24K Gold is always a deep rich orange shade of yellow gold color similar to the gold shown on this page. Another way of expressing gold content is .999 fine gold (999 out of 1000 parts gold). Gold is so ductile that a single ounce of gold can be stretched to a length of over fifty miles, or beaten into a sheet to cover a hundred square feet.
Gold can be made into thread and used in embroidery. The word gold derives from the Old English word gelo meaning yellow. Gold bars were made as early as 4000 BC. It has been estimated that all the gold in the world that has ever been refined would form a single cube 20 m (66 ft) each side. True Adventure may come but once in a lifetime - and usually when its least expected. |
While
the Wisconsin Mine has never produced on a commercial basis, much work has been
done over the years in exploratory tunnelling and shafting at different levels.
More
recently (1985), an extensive diamond drilling, survey and exploratory program
was undertaken by SELCO (the mining division of British Petroleum Resources,
Canada) at a cost of half a million dollars. They completed the last four miles
or road to the mine, did extensive geological work and, during drilling,
maintained a crew of nearly 20 on site - work at times was around the clock (a
helicopter load of beer was flown in every Friday).
PLACER
DEPOSITS
LODE
DEPOSITS
The
gold produced by amalgamation and by precipitation is then refined and poured
into bullion moulds.
A
cubic foot of gold weighs approximately half a ton.