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File Created: 24-Jul-1985 by BC Geological Survey (BCGS)
Last Edit:  06-Aug-2009 by Sarah Meredith-Jones (SMJ)

Summary Help Help

NMI
Name BEULAH, LAST HOPE, KEY, HOMESTAKE, LAST CHANCE Mining Division Golden
BCGS Map 082K049
Status Prospect NTS Map 082K08W
Latitude 050º 26' 56'' UTM 11 (NAD 83)
Longitude 116º 23' 43'' Northing 5588717
Easting 542934
Commodities Silver, Lead, Copper, Zinc, Gold Deposit Types I05 : Polymetallic veins Ag-Pb-Zn+/-Au
Tectonic Belt Omineca Terrane Ancestral North America
Capsule Geology

The Beulah occurrence is located at 2897 metres elevation above sea level, near the summit of Mount Catherine in the Golden Mining Division.

Regionally, the area is underlain by Proterozoic clastic sedimentary rocks of the Purcell and Windermere supergroups and by lower Paleozoic strata of the Beaverfoot and Mount Forster formations (Geoscience Map 1995-1).

The Purcell Supergroup strata include the Aldridge, Creston, Kitchener, Dutch Creek and Mount Nelson formations. The Windermere Supergroup unconformably overlies the Purcell Supergroup rocks and includes the Toby Formation and Horsethief Creek Group (Paper 1990-1).

In the vicinity of the occurrence, rocks of the Kitchener and Dutch Creek formations have been further subdivided and assigned to the Van Creek and Gateway formations. The Van Creek Formation correlates with the Lower Kitchener Formation while the Gateway Formation is equivalent to the lower portion of the Dutch Creek Formation. The Mount Nelson Formation has been subdivided into seven discrete members, a lower quartzite, a lower dolomite, a middle dolomite, a purple dolomite, an upper middle dolomite, an upper quartzite, and an upper dolomite (Open File 1990-26).

Rocks of the Horsethief Creek Group, Beaverfoot and Mount Forster formations are folded and overthrusted by rocks of the upper portion of the Dutch Creek Formation and the lower members of the Mount Nelson Formation. The sedimentary rocks have undergone regional metamorphism to at least greenschist facies.

The prospect has been explored with several trenches and a 45 metre long adit. Mineralization is hosted within a sheared quartz-barite vein cutting the middle dolomite member of the Mount Nelson Formation (Open File 1990-26). The vein varies in width from 5 to 60 centimetres and has been followed along strike for a distance of 150 metres. Galena, bournonite, sphalerite and tetrahedrite occur as narrow streaks and massive pockets the entire length of the vein. Malachite and azurite are common in surface exposures.

In 1926, a 52 tonne ore bulk sample was collected from the adit and shipped to the Trail smelter. Although recovery from the bulk sample is not known, the average grade of the shipment was 2000 grams per tonne silver, 57 per cent lead, 0.8 per cent copper and 3.4 grams per tonne gold (Property File - Galloway, J.D. (1926): Report on Key Group).

Bibliography
EMPR AR *1915-95; 1924-224; 1925-224; 1926-240; 1927-482
EMPR FIELDWORK 1989, pp. 29-23
EMPR GEOS MAP 1995-1
EMPR OF 1990-26, p. 36
EMPR PF (*Galloway, J.D. (1926): Report on Key Group; 82KSE General
File - Geology map by P. Billingsley, 1958)
GSC MAP 1326A
GSC MEM 148; 369
Pope, A.J. (1989): The Tectonics and Mineralization of the Toby-
Horsethief Creek Area, Purcell Mountains, Southeast British
Columbia, Canada, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of London,
England
EMPR PFD 4201, 750107

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