The CAMP HEWITT 3 occurrence is located on the west side of Okanagan Lake, approximately 1 kilometre northwest of Pincushion Bay.
The prospect occurs in greenstone of the Triassic-Jurassic Nicola Group. To the south the Nicola Group rocks are underlain and intruded by granodiorite of the Early Jurassic Pennask Batholith. Eocene Penticton Group volcanics overlie the Nicola Group rocks to the north.
Mineralization on the property is reported to follow shear zones within the Nicola greenstone. The main shear zone is up to 2 metres wide, striking 235 degrees and dipping 85 degrees southeast. The shear zone contains highly fractured greenstone and small, irregular calcite and quartz veining. Mineralization includes blebs and disseminations of chalcopyrite, pyrite, sphalerite, and galena in quartz veins.
A shaft, commonly known as the main Gladstone shaft, was sunk by the Camp Hewitt Mining and Development Company in the late 1890s to a depth of approximately 50 metres. Development work is reported to have included 40 metres of tunneling and crosscuts on the 30 and 45 metre levels. Seventy metres north of this main shaft is a second shaft which has been sunk in a shear zone striking 330 degrees and dipping 60 degrees southwest. Mineralization at this locality is the same as at the main shaft. Veins are up to 3 centimetres wide and malachite staining is common. A normal fault, 100 metres east of the shafts, strikes 020 degrees and dips 70 degrees southeast. East of this fault is a thin bed of graphitic limestone enclosed in greenstone. The limestone bed is fault displaced about 180 metres to the north. South of this limestone bed the greenstone is intruded by granodiorite of the Pennask Batholith. Cutting all rocks on the property are several "Coryell type" syenite dikes. They contain traces of minor pyrite and are fine-grained to highly porphyritic.
All of the early workings on the property are attributed to the Camp Hewitt Mining and Development Company, who developed the prospect under the name of the Gladstone Mine. However, despite the extensive workings, production records are limited to an 1897 notation that 2 small shipments of quartz containing chalcopyrite had been made to the smelter at Tacoma. The ore grades (average of both shipments) were: 3 grams per tonne gold, 474 grams per tonne silver, and 11.1 per cent copper (Minister of Mines Annual Report 1897, page 609). Tonnages mined or shipped are not recorded.
In 1972, Vega Mines Ltd. carried out a soil geochemical survey centred over the CAMP HEWITT 3 area, copper and zinc soil anomalies were identified in areas of known mineralization. In 1984, Charles Brett funded a VLF-EM survey over the same general area. The survey was able to identify gross lithological features, but was not useful in defining shear zones.
