Project Overview
The Crescent Fault Project is located about 8 miles east-northeast of the Cortez Mine, near the town of Crescent Valley and comprises 33 unpatented mining claims that cover a total of 660 acres. It is an advanced grassroots exploration property, meaning it has established targets, but no defined resources.
Area Geology
The project covers an area of Permian carbonate and clastic sediments, intruded by a lacolith (or sill) of Cretaceous age granodiorite. Surface alteration of the area is manifested by jasperoid and banded quartz veining. The through-going Crescent Fault zone has both lateral and vertical displacement, which has been active up to recently! A nearby geothermal system is actively forming a calcareous sinter.
Exploration
A total of 20 drill holes have explored the project area for 8836 feet. Eleven of the drill holes explored the footwall portion of the fault, defining gold mineralization from 110 feet (grading 0.01 opt) to 20 feet (grading 0.12 opt), over a length of approximately 1200 feet. The footwall mineralization is believed to be hosted in silicified and skarn altered Antler limestone sequence. Hanging wall mineralization is hosted within siliceous sinter, intrusive, and carbonate rocks.
Most recently, American Goldfields completed seven CSMT lines to help define mineralization and depth to bedrock on the down dropped portion of the zone. This work, coupled with past exploration, has extended the known mineralization area northeast and southwest. These results confirm the existence of a gold-bearing hydrothermal system associated with silicification of host rocks and structural preparation. Continued exploration of this system is recommended to define the extent and quality of the gold mineralization.
Nearby drilling of the geothermal system has identified a thick zone of disseminated gold under a shallow alluvial cover. Other nearby deposits include Barrick’s Cortez, the Cortez Hills, Gold Rush, Four Mile, Buckhorn, and Pipeline complex mines which have produced over 20 million ounces of gold and contain at least an additional 25 million ounces.
