The Quest for Maine Gold

[triple d]

Most of the best mines I have read about. There where chasing the lead and silver deposits.And small amounts of gold. But the same is true. For some reason they stopped mining. I think these veins contain several minerals together. Silver lead and gold. So the cost of prosessing it could be too much. But thats what samples are for. The area I find most of my ore is in the Rangley formation. Even thou its in N.H. I think testing could give you a good idea of what you have. And maybe how much it would be to process it. I thought galena was a cube also. If I knew how to post a picture. Id show you the rock I found in Maine. It has quite a bit of Lead and silver I think. Keep on searching.

 

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[OreCart]

Most of the best mines I have read about. There where chasing the lead and silver deposits.And small amounts of gold. But the same is true. For some reason they stopped mining. I think these veins contain several minerals together. Silver lead and gold. So the cost of prosessing it could be too much. But thats what samples are for. The area I find most of my ore is in the Rangley formation. Even thou its in N.H. I think testing could give you a good idea of what you have. And maybe how much it would be to process it. I thought galena was a cube also. If I knew how to post a picture. Id show you the rock I found in Maine. It has quite a bit of Lead and silver I think. Keep on searching.

Mineralization is all new to me. I grew up digging in the dirt and always enjoyed geology, but it was pretty basic. When I worked in construction and often welded pile, it was interesting to see the lay of the bedrock deep down below based on how far the pile driver sank the pile or sheets. The aggregate industry is far more boring; is the rock small enough? If not, run it through the jaw, and if it is, classify it with the Extec.

I was in one pit though, and it had this band of purple rocks, maybe 2 feet wide, and looked burnt. It was the strangest thing. Anyway I would try digging into that and just about pry my teeth off the windshield it was so hard, and I was using a decent loader too. A John Deere 740G with 5 yard spade nose bucket.

It would stand the loader on its front tires before it would break that rock apart. I never did find out what the rock was, but was it ever hard. We had a Cedar Rapid Jaw Crusher breaking it down to four inch, and the rocks would pop up instead of being crushed it was so hard. Eventually they did, but when you saw those purple rocks, you did not stick your head over the jaw to see how they were doing...they would zip by your face!

But rock identification has always interested me, and now mineralization.

 

[OreCart]

One thing our soil apparently has some of, is titanium. I say that because I looked up what type of garnet we had here from my first sampling outcrop, and it was black garnet. That is melanite because it was picked up by a magnet. The Melanite gets its black color from titanium.

I am not saying a person could open a titanium mine here by any means, but apparently it is here in some quantities.

 

[triple d]

Silver is found in native form.Rarely in nugget form. But usually combined with sulfur; arsenic; antimony or chlorine. And in various ores argentite;chloragrite;Or horn silver and galena a lead ore. Containing Significant amounts of silver.And if any Arsenopyrite in the ore gold. Look this up thought you would be interested. Some of these minerals are in the rocks I am crushing.So i may have to smelt some and see how much. Silver is in the ore. And i think your on to the same thing.

 

[OreCart]

Silver is found in native form.Rarely in nugget form. But usually combined with sulfur; arsenic; antimony or chlorine. And in various ores argentite;chloragrite;Or horn silver and galena a lead ore. Containing Significant amounts of silver.And if any Arsenopyrite in the ore gold. Look this up thought you would be interested. Some of these minerals are in the rocks I am crushing.So i may have to smelt some and see how much. Silver is in the ore. And i think your on to the same thing.

Yeah I got to get that ore crushed up and off to be assayed. As they say in farming regarding soil sampling of our fields, "It is just a guess, unless you test". So it is with crushed up ore!

I can ship one sample off, I managed to beat enough rock into submission for that, but it was crazy-hard work doing so by hand.

I have been designing a 3 point hitch implement for my farm tractor, and think I got a working plan for that. I was going in another direction, but a guy on here let me know it was NOT a good plan, so I went in a different direction, and hopefully it will take my ore from 4" down to powder in one pass. It is nothing a person could ever use to glean any gold/silver from hard rock, but for sampling it would be nice. I just got to get the steel and start welding it up.

 

[OreCart]

When I started this adventure, I figured I would just chase the gold upstream and MAYBE find the lode gold, I never imagined it would encompass such a broad area. It is too early to determine if I have found a new gold bearing district of Maine, but it is entirely possible.

I have since backtracked, realizing I need to really study the area, and get some soil sampling done. There are times of the year to do that, and now is not one of them. We got another foot of snow yesterday, and so with frozen ground, and neck deep snow, collecting soil samples is silly.

So right now it is back to photogeology.

 

[OreCart]

There is no way I can sample it all, so I have been using LIDAR, Subsurface Flows, and Soil Mapping to map out the best place to grab soil samples when I can get out and take them.

This is VERY rugged country, so it is not just a matter of sampling sediment in one stream and covering five hundred acres, but really studying the LIDAR Maps, and determining where the drainages come in to get the maximum amount of acre per sample, then if the results look promising, tracing it back up the individual ravines to get an idea of which ones have the highest concentration of gold is.

Yes, very basic stuff, but overwhelming in scope. I certainly NEVER thought this quest would bring me to this point, and I doubt I will ever finish this work in my lifetime.

Unfortunately there is five feet of snow on the ground so I can only take samples from outcroppings right now. But it is late winter, and when the snow does melt, I am hoping I can concentrate my efforts on one particular spot which is close to where I originally found gold. It is very promising, but unfortunately has no outcroppings of rock. The soil is EXTREMELY thin there, and so when the snow does melt, and the ground thaws, I can go in with my backhoe and get down to bedrock and see what is there.

It would be ideal because it is located just far away from everything that it would not bother anyone, but is adjacent to my gravel pit so I can build a nice access road without undue costs. It also has a pretty good vertical face to start working off from, and being a hummock of bedrock, I can see how much volume is here. I even cleaned it off last year with the feller-buncher so it is void of forest. It really would be the best place to start digging I think.

 

[OreCart]

I was able to get out today and check on a outcropping of rock on the Southwest side of this unique bedrock. It was not much, barely high enough to feel when you roll over it with a skidder, but it stuck out of the snow enough for me to get some samples. I was encouraged to see that right up through the middle of it was a vein of quartz, with some quartz pods as well in the host rock. So it is promising.

I have not seen any visible gold yet like I did in the other three spots, but I have yet to really look the samples over, and crush it up either.

But this sample site is some 4000 feet away from the first site I checked (the closest one) so it tells me the bedrock map is holding true to the geology on the ground. But even better, because this site is over the break of the hill...into a whole new watershed, it tells me there is significant depth. We have done test bores close by and know the water table is a staggering 600 feet down.

I have some other places to check around this sample site as soon as the snow melts. That will give me a better idea if the consistency of the quartz veining is holding true.

 

[OreCart]

As the snow continues to melt, a few points are becoming available to sample. A lot of these places consist of ledge on top of the ground. With the warmth of earth melting off the snow, it is easy to connect the dots...literally because you can look in a straight line and see the melted snow waypoints.

The various veins of quartz I am seeing are all running parallel to one another, 218 degrees southwest. Distance between the three veins are about a half mile apart. 0, 1300, and 2600 feet roughly...

I am thinking at this point, the best thing to do is fire up the excavator as soon as the ground thaws and dig a trench between vein two and vein three. It is continuous field so I can do that, it is just too bad to mess my best fields up. However, by doing this I will get an idea of what I am having for various vein widths. If I happen upon one that is several feet wide, I can sample the crap out of it, and then see if maybe it is a place to start excavating.

I think this is the best course of action? (I don't know, as I am new at this?)

 

[triple d]

Look for the rusty crumbley Layers. In and along side the quartz veins. This should be the best stuff. And smells like sulfur.

 

[OreCart]

Oh, okay, that makes sense.

I will have to really do some digging though because the plows and harrows over the years have really played havoc on the bedrock here. They have broken it all up where the plow points have dug into the rock.

It was interesting though as yesterday, as I chased the vein of quartz through the melted snow, out of the woods and across the open fields, I crossed a few rock walls, and in the rock walls was pure quartz rocks. It would not be an exact science, but a person could walk around the rock walls and get an idea where the quartz veins were, as that area of the wall would be close to the quartz vein underneath.

After I posted that previous post about finding the widest vein, I read that the reason they call wide veins of quartz "bull veins" is because they do not produce a lot of gold. I guess that is my way of figuring out I need to research more, and type less!

In a way it is good news because my veins are not all that thick. They say thinner veins have more gold! :-)

 

[triple d]

Also look for areas of schist and shale and quartz. I believe they have something to do with. Faults and areas where the earth moved. And were pushed up and volcanic actions. That formed gold and percipatated it. From deeper in the Ground. Most of the load gold ive seen in Maine. Came from these areas and. Crumbly Rusty rocks around quartz veins. Look up some hard rock mines. See if they have pictures of the veins. It will give you a idea what to look for.Your getting a lot of good info. It should make things a lot easier.

 

[OreCart]

Also look for areas of schist and shale and quartz. I believe they have something to do with.

We have two of those three in our bedrock, having quartz veins and schist, but we do not have shale, rather we have slate instead. The bedrock report also notes it is "garnet bearing schist" which I have confirmed from rock sampling as well.

Faults and areas where the earth moved. And were pushed up and volcanic actions. That formed gold and percipatated it. From deeper in the Ground. Most of the load gold ive seen in Maine. Came from these areas and. Crumbly Rusty rocks around quartz veins.

Of all my surprises on this quest, the local fault line was probably one of the biggest. The fault line is located only 1.17 miles from the closest outcropping of quartz-schist-garnet that I have found so far. I have another place to look that will be closer to the fault line, but it is buried in snow still.

Interestingly enough, that fault line is 218 degrees southwest, and all of my quartz veins I can see so far are running through my bedrock parallel to that.

It is hard to explain, but because I can only check outcroppings of rock due to the snow, it is like playing connect the dot. For instance sample 5 site lines straight up with number 1 sampling spot. And Number 4 sampling spot, lines straight up with sampling 6 spot. They are both running at 218 degrees in strike, but are half a mile apart from one another.

As for upheaval, we definitely have that. The bedrock map shows the majority of this unique bedrock is in a 2000 acre area, and in this area there are four hill tops, and all four of them are within this farm. The bedrock does drift off our property though, I don't want to sound like I own it all because that is not the case, but if the bedrock maps are right, the bedrock does not drift very far off our land...a few hundred feet in each direction.

 

[OreCart]

Another good day...

I am limited in where I can go because of the cold and the snow, but some of the bigger streams are opening up. I hiked a gazillion miles, but made it to a stream I deduced had gold based on the Bedrock and Surficial Maps.

It did.

I had a good feeling when big rocks in the stream were pure quartz, and the stream was flowing over jagged bedrock. There was a few inches of gravel, but that was it, so a good place to pan.

I was seeing a few flakes in my pan, but I am not good at panning yet, and always have my findings reconfirmed by a second person. So I grabbed a cup full of pay dirt gravel, tossed it in a plastic sandwich bag, and headed home. I panned it out in my kitchen sink, and my wife confirmed that it contained three flakes of gold. I am not saying it is a huge take, but this is just sampling.

I did get some pictures, but sadly lost my tripod out of my backpack so the pictures might be fuzzy. I take medication that makes me shake (tremor the Dr's call it), so I need a tripod to get my pictures clear. I will have to go back and retrace my steps and find my tripod. It is supposed to rain so I need my footprints in the snow to know exactly where I went. In some places the snow is still waist deep so I was struggling getting over the eschews.

 

[seafox]

I apologise for not reading the whole thread only the last three pages but I was wondewring you said their was a fault and it parrells the veins. which is to be expected be cause faults are zones of weaknes that the mineral laden water can migrake along. small matter is the land fairly level when you say all 3 veins and the fault strike 218 degrees can you tell the dip ? are they normal faults, reverse or thrust faults or side slip faults like the san andrayus fault. I live in utah and the baison and range reagon streaches from here to the seira nevadas. this part of the earth is streaching east and west and normal faults form where the blocks forming the mountians are left proud as the blocks forming the baisons drop. the dip at the surface is quite steep but down a few thousand feet the fault curves flatter to the west. thrust faults that are much older forced layers of rocks to be shoved over them selves. to the east of the wasatch front that with its fault is the east most fault in the baison and range region the overthrust belt formed traps that capture oil and natural gas the came from the sedimentry layers.

when you talk about the bed rock fading out soon after leaving your land do you meen that it it is deeper because along a fault the block that is away from your land has droped down and been covered by deeper soil and or aluvium?

when you mentioned all the quartz rock in the old field walls, caused me to remember that south east of idaho city their was a mine cut on a most wonderful pure vien of quartz. alas the quartz was too pure not having any mineralization donot know how far down they mined but not one speck of gold was found. Moores creek river trends north east to south west and the gold has all most all been found to the north west of the river the next tributary comming in from the north, grimes creek had one tributary never touched called clear creek because it was void of gold. it was just too far south of the mineralized belt that runs 3 miles north of idaho city trending 70 degrees west of north ( ie 290 degrees. v

very intrestiong writting just trying to visualize the structure underground. how deep is the soil in your fields? many of the baisons out here have 8000 feet of fill in them. the droping block ( the grabbon) having moved down more than 15000 feet compaired to the block that stayed proud called the Horst. often times the horst blocks that form the mountians and are source of the fill washed out onto the grabbons them selves will tilt so that the fault creates a steep side scarp on the west and then to the east another fault creates a steep side scarp that towers over the down droped block to the west the wasatch front is like this steeper on the west and sloping more gently to the east. the seirra nevada on the other hand have a western slope of around 2.5 degrees yet the east face of the range that confronted the pioneers was much steper.

sorry for writting so much but you do sound like you have an intresting geologic formation

 

[OreCart]

I apologise for not reading the whole thread only the last three pages but I was wondewring you said their was a fault and it parrells the veins. which is to be expected be cause faults are zones of weaknes that the mineral laden water can migrake along. Small matter is the land fairly level when you say all 3 veins and the fault strike 218 degrees?

No, not at all. I tried to get Map Developers to draw me out a elevation profile, but for some reason I could not get the application to work. But to give you a rough idea, the terrain is somewhere around a 250 foot + or - drop in elevation along the strike lines.

Can you tell the dip ?

Yes the dip is almost 90 degrees, perhaps 85 degrees and runs pretty consistent throughout the 2000 acres or so of this unique geologic zone.

Are they normal faults, reverse or thrust faults or side slip faults like the san andrayus fault.

This is a strike-slide fault, and is likened to the San Andrius Fault in almost every way. This one is inactive, but like the San Andrius Fault, when two tectonic plats came together, one being mainland Maine, and the other over the Atlantic, it pressed together and caused hills to form. Kind of like how when you push a blanket it bunches up and causes a series of folds. That is what we have here, in a very small area that can be seen on a relief map of Maine.

When you talk about the bed rock fading out soon after leaving your land do you meen that it it is deeper because along a fault the block that is away from your land has droped down and been covered by deeper soil and or alluvium?

No, not at all, and on this I guess I was not very specific, so thanks for pointing this out so I can clear this point up. Maine has very thin soil, most under 10 feet due to glacier action, so what I meant was, the TYPE of bedrock we have where I live, faded out. It just changed from this garnet-quartz-schist to a sandstone type of bedrock that is pretty common throughout Maine.

When you mentioned all the quartz rock in the old field walls, caused me to remember that south east of idaho city their was a mine cut on a most wonderful pure vien of quartz. alas the quartz was too pure not having any mineralization do not know how far down they mined but not one speck of gold was found.

It makes sense now that I think about it, and that what was I read too, that bull veins, or big wide veins of quartz just did not produce much because gold was dispensed up through cracking of the quartz. Without cracking, such as a wide vein of quartz, there would be no place for the gold to push through. But of course today, we have all this history of mining to go back to, and know what we know, because of all the mistakes that miners made back in the old days.

Very intrestiong writting just trying to visualize the structure underground. how deep is the soil in your fields?

It depends on which side of the hill I am farming on. Because the glacier ran southwest in Maine, the southwest fields of the ridgeline have pretty thin soil ranging from exposed bedrock on the surface of the fields, to 18 inches. However the northeast fields, might have topsoil down to fifty two inches. But even then, the depth of topsoil varies widely. I can have 50 inches of topsoil in one end of the field, and yet in the middle have bedrock a few inches down.

This plays havoc with plowing, as I might wear out a set of plow points ever few hundred acres because the plow bottoms are riding over bedrock so much. In fact 90% of the time the spring resets quiver because the plows are riding on top of bedrock. It is very fertile soil, just not very deep in places, but thankfully grass and corn only need 4 inches of soil to grow.

Sorry for writting so much but you do sound like you have an intresting geologic formation

This is what the geologists tell me as well. For me, I feel kind of silly as I never recognized how unique this area is. But I have lived here all my life so I never knew any other kind of soil or bedrock. But we have been here since 1746, a story unto itself, but I think because of that, the mineralization here has been rather undiscovered. I suspect the geologists might know there is something unique here, but being private property, they cannot exactly say so. All their photos state, "public access can be seen on this road cut".

 

[OreCart]

Just as a side note, this is Maine, the most heavily forested state in the nation. We are a farm for sure, but fields only make up a small portion of the land base here. So I might say, "on this farm", but that includes forest and gravel pits. That is because the USDA considers forest to be an economic part of a farm, along with mineral rights.

On this farm anyway, farming always comes first. Then forestry. Then mining (gravel)

I mention this because I do not want people thinking, 'Oh, a farm, it is wide open', when the reality is, the vast majority of it is covered in forest.

 

[OreCart]

It is that horrible time of year; warm enough out so I want to be outside, but all activities still locked up because there is still snow on the ground and the ground is still froze. So I have been out prospecting as I await for more bedrock to be exposed by the melting snow, and the ground to thaw so I can dig.

One of the ways I can do that is by checking out the rock walls. New England has its share of rock walls that if for sure, about enough they say for a 3 foot high, 3 foot wide, rock wall to stretch around the equator. On my own farm, every field is bordered by rock walls, so I have been going around and looking at the rock walls and determining where the quartz is. This allows me to do three things; the first is check out the individual rocks of quartz and check them to see if they have gold in them, but it likely the rocks were not transported too far, and so a vein is underneath the rock wall in that area. Finally I can find adjacent rock walls, and determine the strike of the quartz veining so I can map them out across my farm.

One of the best places to start, is the downhill side of a rock wall. Since my ancestors were using oxen and a stone boat to haul these rocks out of the fields, the biggest pieces are always on the downhill side of the field, and were close to where the rock was dug up. By checking these areas first for large sizes of quartz rocks, I can determine the width of the quartz vein nearby.

This is nothing new. Prospectors in New Hampshire were walking along the rock walls of a farm and found gold embedded in the quartz found in the rock wall. So they located the vein, and ultimately ended up driving a drift some 1300 feet deep before the gold played out.

 

[OreCart]

Well I downloaded some pictures off my camera from the last prospecting trips so people can see what I am seeing, and where I have been.

This picture shows how a keen eye can determine where quartz veins are running by having quartz in the rock walls. I used arrows to indicate the two big quartz rocks in an otherwise endless rock wall made up of schist host rock.

 

[OreCart]

This is the little stream where I found gold. It is not much of a stream by any means...

The stream stems from a swamp flanked on each side by steep hillsides. I am thinking since this is the direction most of the water in the area drained when the glaciers melted, there is a series of benches where more gold settled out. That is my next goal, to see if I can find some benches with gold in them...I think they exist.