Abstract: This report summarizes the results of reconnaissance study of quicksilver deposits in the northwestern corner of Nevada, the northeastern corner of California, and Lake County, Oreg. made in August 1940. The Lene Pine district, Nevada, the Silvertown and Red Hawk properties in California, and the Currier and Glass Butte properties in Oregon were included. The first two of these require further development before a definite opinion as to their value can be formed. The Red Hawk mine has yielded high-grade ore, but the ore bodies so far worked are very small and scattered. The small amount of development at the recently opened Currier mine has yielded encouraging results. The deposits in the Glass Buttes are large but of such low grade that thorough sampling would be needed to determine their value. In general the region appears to warrant more attention from quicksilver prospectors than it has yet received.

Abstract: The Three Kids manganese district, in Clark County, Nev., has produced between 15,000 and 20,000 tons of ore, which contained between 30 and 40 percent manganese, 1.5 percent iron, and 12 percent silica. It is estimated that the reserves in the district aggregate about 5,500,000 tons of ore averaging about 10 percent manganese. Of this amount about 800,000 tons contains more than 20 percent manganese and 4,700,000 tons contains from 5 to 20 percent manganese. The manganese ore is a sedimentary deposit and consists of wad interbedded with lake or playa sediments belonging to the Muddy Creek formation of Pliocene (?) age. Where the manganese content is as high as 30 percent, the wad forms thick massive beds separated by thin almost barren partings. Where the content is low, the wad forms very thin lenses or small irregular blebs scattered through sandstone, or a cement for the sand grains. The zone of manganiferous beds ranges from about 10 to 75 feet in aggregate thickness, but at most places the thickness is between 25 and 40 feet.

From abstract: Tin and tungsten minerals occur in pegmatites and quartz veins at Silver Hill, in secs. 23 and 24, T. 24 N., R. 43 E., 11 miles southeast of Spokane, Wash.

Abstract: The tin and copper deposits at Majuba Hill, Pershing County, Nevada are in a partly brecciated plug of Tertiary rhyolite porphyry, which is altered nearly everywhere to quartz and sericite and in some places is intensely tourmalinized. The tin mineral, cassiterite, appears to be associated with the alteration, for the single concentration of it was formed by replacement of altered breccia. Brecciated and altered rock is, however, only a general guide to potentially tin-bearing ground, and not a specific guide to ore shoots, for most of such rock appears to contain only small amounts of cassiterite, widely and unevenly distributed. The known deposit, which is exposed only underground, is at most 20 by 20 by 10 feet in size, and may contain about 12,000 pounds of metallic tin. The deposit is cut off by a normal fault, which apparently is of small displacement, and the footwall segment has not been found. The copper deposit is in the same normal fault, about 300 feet south of the earlier-formed tin deposit. From it about 4,000 tons of 12 percent copper ore was mined in 1915-18, but none has been mined since and no copper ore is now in sight.

From abstract: Cassiterite was discovered along Irish Creek in the Blue Ridge in the northern part of Rockbridge County, Va., in 1846, but active prospecting and development work were not begun until 1884. The production has been small, probably less than 1,000 tons of ore, and has come chiefly from workings on Panther Run, a small tributary near the headwaters of Irish Creek.

From abstract: Tin-bearing veinlets are exposed in a small area near Izenhood Ranch, 22 miles north of Battle Mountain, Nev. They occur in thick rhyolitic flows of Miocene (?) age, and wood tin, found in the gravels of arroyos that head in the surrounding rhyolite, presumably comes from -other veinlets not yet discovered. The exposed veinlets are about 20 feet in maximum length and a quarter of an inch in average thickness. Parallel and reticulating veinlets form lodes 4 to 6 feet thick and 15 or 20 feet long. Virtually no cassiterite is disseminated in the wall rock.

From abstract: Cassiterite and spodumene, of possible economic importance, occur in a belt, 24.5 miles long and 1.8 miles in maximum width, extending southwestward from Lincolnton to Grover, N. C. This belt is in the Piedmont province, an upland with an average altitude of 1,000 feet, and is readily accessible by rail and highway. The region is underlain by crystalline limestone, quartzite, schists, gneisses, and granite. The rocks strike northeast and, in most of the belt, dip steeply northwest. Most of them are deeply weathered.

From introduction: Lode and placer deposits of massive topaz rock were discovered near the old Brewer gold mine in northwestern Chesterfield County, S. C., in 1935. Preliminary tests have shown that this rock can be used in the manufacture of refractory ware and as a source of mullite, thus augmenting supplies of kyanite that have been coming from India.

From abstract: Scheelite ore bodies occur at widely separated localities in the Sierra Nevada near Bishop, Calif. The scheelite is found in altered sedimentary rocks at or near the contact between granitic rocks and limestones that are partly changed to silicate rocks composed largely of garnet. Mineralization was closely connected with the intrusion of the granite, the latest of the varied intrusives that make up the rocks of the Sierra Nevada.

Abstract: The tungsten deposits of the Nightingale district are just within the western border of Pershing County, Nev., and in the Nightingale or Truckee Range, which lies east of Winnemucca Lake. The Tertiary volcanic rocks of the district rest unconformably upon intrusive granodiorite and steeply dipping metamorphosed limestones and slates of unknown age. The tungsten deposits are of the contact-metamorphic type: The ore consists of scheelite bearing tactite, a dark silicate rock that was formed by metamorphism of limestone at the granodiorite contact. Scheelite (calcium tungstate) is the only valuable mineral. The gangue minerals are epidote, quartz, pyroxene, garnet, calcite, tremolite, molybdenite, pyrite, pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, arsenopyrite, apatite, and sphene. The bodies of tactite are generally tabular, and they extend downward steeply, because both the limestones and the granodiorite contact dip vertically or nearly so. The largest tactite body of the district is at the Nightingale mine; it attains a maximum thickness of 60 feet and is nearly a thousand feet long, but only for part of its length is it thick enough and rich enough to be potentially minable. That it continues downward below the mine workings, which extend to a depth of 128 feet, is shown by nine drill …

From abstract: The Blue Wing district, Lemhi County, Idaho, is not only the principal tungsten mining district in the State but it has recently become one of the leading producers of tungsten in the United States. So far only one mine in the district is productive, but other prospects are being actively developed.

From abstract: Deposits of vanadium-bearing sandstone are widely distributed in western Colorado and eastern Utah and have been the principal domestic source of vanadium, uranium, and radium. Except during a few years when operations were relatively small, deposits at one or more places in this region have been intensively mined since 1909. Production has increased considerably each year since 1937.

Abstract: The presence of cinnabar in the Wild Horse district, in western Lander County, Nev., has been known since about 1916, but little ore was produced until 1940. In that year and early in 1941, deposits discovered in 1939 were mined to apparent exhaustion by the Wild Horse Quicksilver Mining Co., which had produced 827 flasks at the end of April 1941. The district is underlain by moderately deformed sandstone, shale, and limestone of Lower and Middle Triassic age, locally covered by remnants of a mantle of Tertiary fanglomerate, tuff, and lava. The Triassic rocks are partly silicified, and cinnabar has been found in and near silicified rock, particularly the silicified limestone at the base of -the Middle Triassic. The ore bodies so far discovered were individually small and ill-defined, and had an average tenor of less than 0.5 percent of quicksilver. Other similar ore bodies are to be expected at moderate depths, but the cost of exploration for them may, perhaps, prove excessive.