The Black mine is situated on the east part of district Lot 87, 150 metres southeast of White Creek and 7 kilometres west-southwest of Princeton.

The mine occurs near the western margin of the Princeton Basin, a northerly trending half-graben superimposed on volcanics and sediments of the Upper Triassic Nicola Group. The basin is separated into a northern and southern area by the gentle, northwest-striking Rainbow Lake anticline. The southern area, in which this deposit occurs, is a structural depression with beds dipping 10 to 20 degrees south near Princeton, and gently east between Asp (China) Creek and the Tulameen River. South of Princeton are two major east-striking asymmetric anticlines with gentle to moderate southerly dips continuing to the south. On the western margin of the basin, the strata dips approximately 50 degrees east. In the southern part of the basin two north to northwest plunging anticlines are present. The basin is bounded and cut in places by a number of approximately north to northeast-striking, westerly dipping faults. The main faults are the Asp Creek fault and the Boundary fault.

This coal deposit is hosted in a sequence of sandstone, shale, waterlain rhyolite tephra (tuff) and coal, up to 2000 metres thick, comprising the Eocene Allenby Formation (Princeton Group). The mine is developed in the Princeton-Black-Blue Flame coal zone, the stratigraphically lowest and thickest of four coal-bearing zones in a 530-metre section in the Allenby Formation. Its thickness varies from 1.6 to 19.2 metres with approximately 9.1 metres of coal. The coal occurs in bands 7 centimetres to 5.5 metres thick, with interbeds of shaly coal, bentonite, sandstone, and shale separating the individual seams. The Princeton-Black-Blue Flame coal zone was also mined at the Princeton Colliery (092HSE089), the Princeton- Tulameen mine (092HSE209), Tulameen Collieries (092HSE210), the Pleasant Valley Nos. 2 and 4 mines (092HSE211) and the Blue Flame Colliery (092HSE216).

The deposit at the Black mine strikes 024 degrees and dips 50 to 52 degrees east. The coal has been mined over a dip length of 90 metres and a strike length of 270 metres. Three coal seams, 2.7 to 5.2 metres thick, are contained in a stratigraphic section 15.2 metres thick. A total of 12.0 metres of clean coal is present in this interval. The seams are separated by 0.7 to 1.9 metres of bentonite or dirty coal. A few bands of bentonite, sandstone or dirty coal, up to 0.29 metre thick, occur in individual seams. The deposit is overlain by a competent shale and underlain by a 14.5- metre thick section of dirty coal with minor bentonite and a few thin seams of clean coal. Indicated (probable) and inferred (possible) reserves are estimated at 2.27 million and 7.8 million tonnes respectively over a strike length of 1680 metres (Coal Assessment Report 180, pages 6-22, 6-23).

The coal is non-coking in character and has a rank of lignite A to sub-bituminous C. Two channel samples taken across a true stratigraphic thickness of 14.8 metres in the uppermost part of the coal zone analyzed as follows (Coal Assessment Report 183, pages 3, 4):

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                    Sample 1            Sample 2
                   (per cent)          (per cent)
Moisture              24.88               24.69
Ash                   35.33               21.12
Calorific value (dry) 6630                8001
(B.T.U.'s per pound)
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Sample 1 includes waste, while sample 2 excludes 3 metres of waste (mostly bentonite and low grade coal), with numerous thinner rock partings included.

This deposit was mined underground intermittently by various operators between 1929 and 1943. The deposit was then operated as a strip mine between 1947 and 1951 by Granby Mining (1947), Fred Mannix and Company Ltd. (1948-1949) and R.B. Savage (1950-1951). Total coal production is 44,791 tonnes.