The Hamilton Creek gold mine is located at the north end of Vidette Lake, north of the Vidette mine (092P 086) on the west side of Hamilton Creek valley. The area is approximately 50 (air) kilometres north of Savona and is accessible on a good-quality gravel road which leads north from the Trans-Canada Highway approximately 7.4 kilometres west of Savona.
The Vidette Lake area is underlain by mafic volcanic rocks of Upper Triassic Nicola Group exposed in a window eroded through flat-lying Miocene sedimentary rocks and plateau basalts of the Chilcotin Group. The uppermost Chilcotin Group strata comprise an extensive layer of plateau basalts of the Chasm Formation, underlain by volcanic ash and fluviatile and lacustrine sedimentary strata of the Deadman River Formation which occupy a northwest-trending Miocene channel. The Nicola rocks are intruded by biotite-hornblende granodiorite plugs which are possibly related to the Triassic to Jurassic Thuya batholith. Nicola rocks are generally augite andesites commonly altered to chlorite-rich or calcareous greenstones, however contact metamorphism has developed garnet-diopside-actinolite skarn or tactite adjacent to the intrusive rocks.
The Hamilton Creek mine is located 900 metres northwest of the Vidette mine and along strike from the Tenford vein (092P 086). One or more northwest striking, east-dipping veins have been documented (Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 179). The veins are composed mainly of quartz and carbonate with minor pyrite rarely reach 30 centimetres in thickness. A sample taken along a 6 metre length of vein which ranged from 2 to 9 centimetres in thickness assayed 49 grams per tonne gold and 130 grams per tonne silver (Minister of Mines Special Report 17, 1936).
The first record of work was in the 1930s (Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 179; Minister of Mines Special Report 17, 1936) when the property was explored by several pits, three short adits and diamond drilling. In 1983, some of the underground workings were rehabilitated and washed, and nine samples taken in an underground sampling program (Assessment Report 12670). The highest assay was 0.9 gram per tonne gold and 3.1 grams per tonne silver in a quartz vein. A soil geochemical program (38 samples) was also undertaken (Assessment Report 12670).
