The Iron King property, including the Iron King (Lot 9289), Bodie (Lot 9290) and the Boston (Lot 9291) Crown granted claims, is situated near Beasley, 12 kilometres west of Nelson. Access to the property from the highway near Beasley is 8.5 kilometres via the Smallwood Creek forestry road.
The claims were Crown-granted to William Moore in 1909. Exploration at the time consisted of trenches, shafts and adits at intervals over 600 metres. The property was investigated in 1933 by trenching and drilling of 4 holes totalling 351 metres.
The claims are at the contact of the Nelson plutonic rocks and a pendant of volcanic and sedimentary rocks of the Rossland Group. The plutonic rocks, exposed on the western part of the property, are composed of banded, medium-grained granite - granodiorite, striking 035 degrees, dipping 65 degrees northwest. The sedimentary rocks are mostly schistose quartzites and argillites trending northeast, dipping 45 degrees southeast. The contact between the intensely metamorphosed sedimentary rocks is characterized by skarn development, mostly garnet and epidote, that may extend a considerable distance into the lime-rich metasedimentary units.
The garnet and epidote is accompanied locally by magnetite and small amounts of pyrrhotite, pyrite, marcasite and chalcopyrite. The magnetite occurs as disseminations in the skarn or as irregular masses varying from 1 to 20 metres in width. Although iron content of the skarn can range up to 50 per cent. Good but erratic gold values have been obtained. One grab sample yielded over 80 grams per tonne gold (Starr, 1926). A 1.5-metre section of drill core assayed 1.37 grams per tonne gold and a 4.9-metre chip sample returned 46.6 grams per tonne gold (1933 Drillhole Summary (Property File)).
The strongly mineralized zone had been traced (by 1926) for well over 600 metres in length, having a maximum width of 60 metres.