The Empire State occurrence is located approximately 3 kilometres north of Kitchener, on the west side of the south flowing portion of the Goat River.

Regionally, the area is underlain by the peri-cratonic Middle Proterozoic Purcell Supergroup, a thick succession of siliciclastic and lesser carbonate rocks. The Purcell Supergroup is well known for hosting a number of significant deposits that include the Sullivan (082FNE052) sedimentary-exhalative lead-zinc deposit and the Troy copper-silver deposit in Montana.

More locally, the area of interest is underlain by Middle Proterozoic sedimentary rocks of the Aldridge Formation and by penecontemporaneous intrusive sills and dikes of the Moyie intrusions. The Aldridge Formation is the lowermost division of the Purcell Supergroup and is composed of turbiditic siliciclastic rocks, quartzofeldspathic wacke and siltstone, and numerous gabbro sills. The focus of exploration in the Aldridge Formation is the contact between the Lower Aldridge and the Middle Aldridge which corresponds to the time of deposition of the Sullivan deposit. In this particular area of the Purcell basin, the contact between the Lower and Middle Aldridge is somewhat enigmatic in that there is no recognizable facies change.

This occurrence lies to the east of the Iron Range fault and to the west of the Carroll Creek/Kid fault. The strata within this structural block belongs to the eastward-dipping limb of the Goat River anticline. The strata strikes north-south with dips ranging from less than 15 degrees (near the core of the axis) to 25-30 degrees (near the Carroll Creek/Kid fault).

This mineralization is exposed in a number of opencuts which follow a steep-dipping fracture in a dioritic dike (possibly a sill) that is bounded within Middle Aldridge quartzites. The fracture appears to disappear to the southwest and is associated with the presence of pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite disseminated through unaltered diorite. In the main opencut, the fracture appears as a network of small quartz-calcite veinlets. The width of the mineralized zone is 1.2 to 1.5 metres. The change to totally unmineralized diorite is abrupt.

A sample of almost pure pyrrhotite analysed 0.52 per cent nickel (Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 228). No copper grade is reported.