The Esperanza mine is located 1.25 kilometres north of Alice Arm. The mine produced high grade silver ore with associated gold, copper and lead between 1911 and 1948.

The area is underlain by Middle to Upper Jurassic Hazelton Group sediments. The sediments dip moderately to steeply southwest and northeast as a result of being deformed into closely spaced northwest-trending folds.

The deposit comprises numerous quartz veins hosted in thinly bedded argillaceous siltstones. The sediments strike northwest and dip 20 to 50 degrees to the west and mafic dikes cut both the veins and the sediments.

The main vein, and the shear zone enclosing it, appears to be folded into an anticline that plunges 10 to 15 degrees south (exposed in the number 3 and 4 adits). This results in the vein being arcuate in plan view, with the east limb striking 040 degrees and dipping 35 to 40 degrees southeast, and the west limb striking 140 degrees and dipping 35 degrees southwest. The enclosing sediments are not similarly folded, indicating that the vein and shear zone were initially formed in an anticlinal manner. The vein, generally 0.076 and 0.91 metre wide, locally attains widths up to 1.8 metres. It has been traced downdip from the number 1 adit southward to the number 4 adit for a distance of 168 metres. An east-west strike length of 97.5 metres is exposed in the number 4 adit, which follows the vein in an arcuate manner. The vein contains brecciated siltstone fragments and bands of siltstone up to 0.3 metre thick in places.

Mineralization consists of sphalerite, galena, ruby silver (pyrargyrite), pyrite, pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, arsenopyrite, freibergite, argentite and native silver in a gangue of quartz, calcite and siderite. These minerals commonly occur as disseminations throughout the vein and locally form bands of massive sulphides along the hangingwall of the vein. Scheelite is found in erratic patches. Various other, more irregular, bedding-parallel veins of similar mineralogy occur in the vicinity.

The Esperanza mine produced high grade, hand-sorted silver ore sporadically between 1911 and 1948. In total, 4662 tonnes of ore with an average grade of 1.77 grams per tonne gold, 983.9 grams per tonne silver, 0.028 per cent copper and 0.14 per cent lead were mined.

The original Black Bear (Lot 1071), Aldebaran (Lot 1072) and I'll Chance It (Lot 1073) claims were staked in 1908 and surveyed in 1911. The claims have passed through several ownerships including the Esperanza and Lori organizations. After Lori ceased active operations about 1969, the claims reverted and were then acquired by A. Lorinde who had been a principal owner of Lori. In 1974, Lorinde formed a partnership with G.S Brown and R.A. Brown (the ABB Syndicate) and while retaining registered ownership of the claims gave an undivided one-third interest in the claims to each of the other partners.

Starting soon after the original staking of the claims the various owners did development work; most of the work was done on Aldebaran and the adjacent part of Black Bear. Nine adits and two small opencuts were completed on Aldebaran and two adits on Black Bear. Stopes were opened on most of the longer adits. The largest volume of rock was stoped from adit 4 upward to adit 2a. In addition, small amounts of rock were blasted out of the walls of the Bear Creek gorge and from the cliff face running northward from the north portal of adit 3 to a point in the creek below the adit 1 portal. A. Lorinde stated that adit 9 may have been driven below adit 3 or 4 and that the portal is now buried below one of the dumps (ca. 1981). In 1935, a small mill was built on the property. The mill does not seem to have operated after 1969. No work was done on the claims from 1969 until 1975 when G.S. and R.A. Brown of the newly formed ABB Syndicate visited them and located the two dumps now designated Main and Waste dumps and sampled them. In 1976, these two men again sampled the Main dump and located the dump at the mill site and another very small dump between the mill and Main dumps which they also sampled. In 1980, the claims were optioned for two years to Messrs. Treyvaud and Bertschmann representing the Chimo Boreal Mining Company who conducted prospecting. In 1981, a more detailed geological examination was completed. In October 1981, negotiations were completed between ABB Syndicate and Chimo for the latter to take over ownership of the claims. They formed a new company, Aldebaran Silver Mines Inc. and ownership transferred to this company.