The Highland claim, Crown granted to J.C. Rykert in 1891, is located about 1.6 kilometres west of Kootenay Lake and 300 metres north of Cedar Creek, at about the 900 metre elevation. A main haulage tunnel was driven on the vein for about 207 metres. A second tunnel, 30 metres above the first, was driven for 27 metres. A raise was driven on an ore shoot connecting the two tunnels.
The Highland Mining Co. Ltd. of London, England, took over the claim in 1900 and worked it through 1904. In 1905 the property was leased to P. Burns and Co. The Highland-United Co. secured a lease on the mine in 1909 and operated it for part of the year. In 1910 the mine was reopened by the Kootenay Silver Lead Mines Ltd. of Vancouver and their operations continued through 1912.
The Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co. Ltd. acquired the property in 1914 and operated it more or less continuously for the next 13 years. Development work in 1919 included 998 metres of diamond drilling. The mine closed in 1927 and remained idle until 1940 when lessors became interested in working it. The tailings dump was dredged from Kootenay Lake and shipped to the mill. Other groups of leasers removed ore from the old mine workings in 1950-52.
In 1956 Cominco did 600 metres of diamond drilling to check on electromagnetic results. The workings at the present time consist of 5 tunnels along the strike of the vein, the upper three approximately 30 metres apart and two lower about 61 metres apart, thus giving a depth of 214 metres below the outcrop. The total length of the workings is approximately 4000 metres, part of this being on the adjoining Josephine claim.
The Highland occurrence is hosted by micaceous quartzites of the Mississippian to Lower Permian Milford Group and hornblende schists of the Permo-Triassic Kaslo Group. The rocks are cut by bedding- parallel "mica" or "non-mica" dykes (lamprophyres). Close to the veins, hornblende schists and dykes are highly altered to soft whitish yellow material and quartzites are silicified.
The vein system consists of a series of related discontinuous faults with senestral lateral displacements of 3 to 40 metres. The faults with largest displacement appear to contain more ore. The orebodies occur as tabular masses located preferentially close to the hornblende schists-quartzite contact. Wall rock of hornblende schists are badly decomposed whereas those in quartzite are regular and well defined. Good ore shoots in hornblende schist pass rapidly to narrow and less mineralized veins in the quartzites. The ore consists of coarse to fine-grained, sheared galena with locally abundant sphalerite in banded, comb-textured to massive quartz with some siderite and locally fluorite.
From 1896 until 1954, 88,127 tonnes of ore was mined from the Highland. Commodites recovered included 10.5 million grams of silver, 9.4 millin kilograms of lead, 0.38 million kilograms of zinc, 548 kilograms of cadmium and 62 grams of gold.
