The area is underlain by dark grey to black grits and ash-rich argillaceous siltstones of the Salmon River Formation, which are underlain by a felsic tuff sequence of the Mount Dilworth Formation, both of the Lower Jurassic Hazelton Group.

The Silver Hill occurrence lies west of the fold axis of the Dilworth Syncline. The Eocene Portland Canal dyke swarm trends perpendicular to the volcanic-sedimentary sequence. Most of the mineralization occurs within these dykes, which consist largely of quartz porphyry. Mineralization occurs as small discontinuous stringers or in small quartz stringers. These mineralized veins, which are up to one metre wide, contain sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite, pyrite, polybasite and native silver.

A sample across an 8.2 metre section of mineralization assayed 343 grams per tonne silver, including a 61 centimetre section of 38 grams per tonne gold and 3051 grams per tonne silver (Minister of Mines Annual Report 1920).

Thirty-six tonnes of ore from surface cuts, shipped in 1925, assayed 8434 grams per tonne silver (Annual Report 1925). One tonne of this ore produced 9668.6 grams of silver and 41.7 kilograms of lead (Bulletin 58).

Work History

The Silver Hill property was originally staked by a Mr. Seymour Campbell. Silver Crest Mines, Limited was formed in October 1919 to take over the 11-claim group, including the Idaho, September Fr., and Argentite claims. The showings were prospected by open cutting until 1921. No further work was done until 1924 when underground development work was begun. The mineralization exposed by this work was disappointing and activities ceased in 1926. Underground work consists of two adits with a combined length of over 152 metres. The Lion group of 5 claims, the Lion Nos. 1, 2, & 3, Lion Fr., Tiger Fr. (Lots 4166-4169) were owned by D.B. Markill and W. Hobill, of Stewart. Some open cutting was done on the showings in 1927. The claims were Crown-granted in 1929.

An airborne geophysical survey was carried out in the area on behalf of Atna Mines in 1969 (Assessment Report 2320).

In 1991, Westmin Resources had an airborne magnetic and electromagnetic survey conducted over the Premier Gold property totalling 760 kilometres. This survey covered an extensive area on the south end near the Premier mine area, north to the Yellowstone area, appearing to be far enough east to cover the Silver Hill area.

See also Yellowstone (104B 039) and Premier (104B 054) for related details of the Dilworth and Premier properties that were held as a single entity in the 2000s by Bolden and Ascot Resources.