The gold-bearing black sands of northeast Graham Island have been known since 1877. The Oeanda area is located 4.8 kilometres south of the mouth of the Oeanda River.

The sands were examined in 1906, and in 1910 Sandhurst Gold Mines, Limited, obtained 13 placer leases. In 1918 the company installed a centrifugal action gold amalgamating machine. They had estimated the sand would average 60 cents per yard, with maximum values of $4 per yard in gold. In the summer of 1924 the area was tested by 57 pits, 0.9 x 1.5 metres and 2 to 3.6 metres deep. The average assay was 77 cents per ton of gold. The following year Tretheway-Tough Mining Syndicate, Limited, financed operations and testing. Twenty-eight assays from pit samples gave an average of $2.90 per ton of gold and a recovery rate of 81 per cent of gold. In 1930, Hanssen Positive Separation-Mining Co., Limited, recovered $325 in gold; the company declared bankruptcy on Nov. 27, 1930. In 1932 testing was carried on by Gold Beach Mines, Limited.

Mogul Mining Corporation Limited in about 1956 acquired placer mining leases covering about 17 square kilometres. In June 1957 Lexindin Gold Mines, Limited, acquired from Mogul a 65 per cent interest in the property.

Pleistocene to Recent deposits of unconsolidated to semi- consolidated sands, clays, sandy clays, gravels, conglomerates, and a basal blue-grey glacial clay overlie Tertiary Skonun Formation. The basal formation blue-grey glacial clay ranges up to 69 metres in thickness with 0.3 to 0.6 metre beds of ferrugenous gravel which lie above and below the clay beds. Sand and peat lie unconformably on the clay and cemented gravel beds which dip 015 degrees and strike east-west.

Black sand deposits have a lenticular and varying distribution along the base of bordering beach-bluffs. The black sands, derived from the erosion of the bluffs and subsequent concentration by wave and wind action, contain magnetite, titaniferous-hematite, ilmenite, rutile, zircon, and gold.

Beach sand and cyanide tailings samples were sent to the Mines Branch, Ottawa, in December 1956 and June 1957 for tests for concentrates of magnetite, ilminite, rutile and zircon. A chemical analysis of 2 head samples gave averages of 41.48 per cent iron and 8.38 per cent titanium dioxide (Mines Branch, Ottawa, Investigation Report No. MD 3177, October 1957).

Recorded production for the Masset Sound and northeast Graham Island beach placers is as follows (See Bull Swamp - 103G 001):

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YEAR GRAMS GOLD

1921-1925 124

1926-1930 871

1931-1935 10,358

1936-1940 8,147

1941-1945 2,737

TOTAL 22,239

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