The St. Louis area (formerly Crown Grant Lot 7261) is located at the headwaters of Galena Creek.
There are five major bands of limestone in the area which are known locally as the Black Warrior, Silver Leaf, Ellsmere Ledge, Horne Ledge and Surprise limestone. The Black Warrior was mapped by the Geological Survey of Canada as the Badshot Formation. It is thought that all these bands are part of the Lower Cambrian Badshot Formation, repeated by folding. These bands are interfolded with schist and phyllites of the Cambrian to Devonian Index Formation, Lardeau Group.
The St. Louis is described as the most easterly of the Ellesmere limestone-Mississippi Valley-type mineralization. Generally, in the Ellesmere limestone, this type of mineralization occurs as a mixture of sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite, pyrite and siderite in a matrix of partially silicified and dolomitized coarse-grained marble. The Dennys reported that there are such zones on the St. Louis where the limestone is in contact with schist and were drifted on by the old timers.
The property was first mentioned in 1900 when it was reported that it existed at the head of Lardeau Creek and was owned by the Galena Creek Mining Company. It was Crown-granted in 1906 to E.G. Sills. The area was largely inactive until the 1980s when a number of the old workings came into the possession of Jack and Eric Denny, through purchase or staking. The two rehabilitated many of the access trails and workings in the area of Galena Creek and to the east (to Marsh Adam Creek) and north. Some of the historically documented mineral occurrences were found and examined during this period but the mineralization was examined more as a whole than as individual showings. Please see Ellsmere (082KNW081) for a complete discription of more recent work in this area.
During 2006 through 2009, Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. completed programs of prospecting, geochemical (soil, silt, talus fines and rock) sampling and an airborne geophysical survey on the area as the Kootenay Arc property.
