North Pole-Columbia Lode is Baker County\u2019s top gold prospect<\/p>\n
BAKER CITY \u2014 Mike Werner is excited about seeing what has been hidden, far beneath the ground in the mountains north of Sumpter, for a century or more.<\/p>\n
About one thing in particular \u2014 gold.<\/p>\n
Werner, a longtime mining engineer, is managing director for the Sumpter Gold Project. Werner wrote the pre-application notice of intent with a state agency that proposes to reopen four underground mines near Bourne, about 7 miles north of Sumpter, that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries extracted an estimated 400,000 ounces of gold from what geologists say is the longest vein of the valuable metal ever found in Oregon.<\/p>\n
At the current gold price, around $4,300 per ounce, that amounts to about $1.6 billion.<\/p>\n
Werner, who is working with a group of investors, said he earned a doctorate in mining and metallurgical engineering from the University of Idaho, as well as bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in mining engineering from that university.<\/p>\n
The proposed project, which would include 1,575 acres of private land comprising 84 patented lode, placer and mill site claims, would be the biggest underground gold mining operation on the North Pole-Columbia Lode in more than a century, and the largest in Baker County since the federal government banned mining at Cornucopia, north of Halfway, soon after America entered World War II in 1941.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to get back underground and see what they left,\u201d Werner said. \u201cThe old-timers knew what they had. We\u2019re going to have fun there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Mother Lode of the Blues\u2019<\/p>\n
He said the mining operation could eventually employ 50 to 80 workers, on two daily shifts seven days a week. He hopes to hire as many employees as possible locally. Werner said the work doesn\u2019t require special skills \u2014 people who know how to operate heavy equipment, for instance, can be taught to mine.<\/p>\n
Werner said the operation could spend around $45 million per year. He said that as long as gold prices remain above $1,500, he believes the mines will be profitable.<\/p>\n
The North Pole-Columbia Lode extends for more than 5 miles on the east and west sides of Cracker Creek near Bourne. Werner wrote in the pre-application to the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries that he plans to reopen four of the major mines that intercepted the lode \u2014 the North Pole, Eureka and Excelsior, all east of Cracker Creek, and the Columbia, west of Cracker Creek near Fruit Creek.<\/p>\n
Mark Ferns, of Baker City, who retired in 2011 after a 32-year career as a geologist with DOGAMI, wrote in his recent book, \u201cThe Search for Gold in Oregon,\u201d that the North Pole-Columbia Lode \u201cis by far the largest single vein in Oregon. It is an impressive and truly imposing vein.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Miles F. Potter in his book, \u201cOregon\u2019s Golden Years,\u201d published in 1976, mines along the North Pole-Columbia Lode produced \u201cmore than a quarter of the total of $17,000,000 for Oregon\u2019s gold output in the years 1896 to 1900.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some records refer to the North Pole-Columbia as the \u201cMother Lode of the Blues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assays report plenty of gold remains<\/p>\n
Werner said he learned about the North Pole-Columbia Lode during the 1980s, when a company called AMEX was exploring the area.<\/p>\n
The late Howard Brooks, like Ferns a longtime DOGAMI geologist who worked from the agency\u2019s office in Baker City, wrote in his 2007 book, \u201cA Pictorial History of Gold Mining in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon,\u201d that the company in the early 1980s reopened the Excelsior and Eureka (often referred to as the E&E) and North Pole mines.<\/p>\n
The company also excavated a new tunnel, the Jevne edit, that extends 600 feet into a slope on the west side of Cracker Creek just south of Bourne.<\/p>\n
The early 1980s mining was the most extensive on the lode since the late 1930s and early 1940s, according to Brooks\u2019 book. During the earlier period, miners built a new ore-processing mill at the E&E site just north of Bourne, Brooks wrote. Mining ended by federal government order, as at Cornucopia, in 1942, Brooks wrote.<\/p>\n
Werner, who said he has worked in mines \u201call over the world,\u201d said he first toured the Bourne area in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n
He said the records AMEX compiled, including assays that estimated amount of gold in the mines, convinced him that with modern techniques, the lode could be mined profitably.<\/p>\n
Werner said AMEX ended work on the North Pole-Columbia Lode not due to a lack of gold, but because an open-pit gold mine in Nevada was more profitable at the time. He said the company\u2019s decision was sensible at the time.<\/p>\n
Mine would not use cyanide<\/p>\n
Werner said the mining system he is proposing is much more \u201cenvironmentally friendly\u201d than past practices.<\/p>\n
In the notice of intent, he wrote that in addition to reopening the underground mines and drilling new shafts and tunnels, a mill would be built at the site of the former Columbia mine mill on the west side of Cracker Creek near Fruit Creek.<\/p>\n
The mill would crush and grind ore and then produce a concentrated ore using gravity and a \u201cfloatation\u201d process that uses water and chemicals to separate the gold-bearing ore from waste rock. The final step of extracting gold, which uses cyanide, would not happen at the mill or anywhere else in Oregon, Werner said.<\/p>\n
The concentrated ore would be shipped outside the state, potentially to Korea, for final processing, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll chemicals used in the floatation process will be reclaimed and returned within the mill facility (zero discharge),\u201d Werner wrote in the notice of intent.<\/p>\n
Although the permitting process through the state geology agency could potentially take more than five years, according to a proposed timeline, Werner said he hopes to gain approval to start mining sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy argument is that we\u2019re not opening a new mine, we\u2019re reopening four mines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The properties are owned by the Cracker Creek Gold Corp., which is based in Valencia, California, according to Baker County Assessor\u2019s Office records. Werner said he and his investors have an option with the owners to mine the properties.<\/p>\n
Ferns said the North Pole-Columbia Lode has the most potential for profitable gold mining of any patented property in Baker County.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a significant resource up there,\u201d he said. \u201cWith the value of gold what it is, this is an opportune time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Pole-Columbia Lode is Baker County\u2019s top gold prospect BAKER CITY \u2014 Mike Werner is excited about seeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-215036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}