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The Company owns approximately 900,000 acres of mineral rights and fee lands in western Montana. The fee mineral rights underlie surface rights owned by other parties. The lands and mineral rights are comprised primarily of lands assembled in the early 1900s by The Anaconda Company for their timber and mineral potential. The lands occur in fourteen counties in the mountainous terrain west of the Continental Divide, with most of the lands being located within 50 miles east and west of Missoula, extending to the Idaho State line, and within sixty miles west of Kalispell in northwestern Montana. The mineral rights and fee lands contain many known occurrences of gold, silver, copper, barite, phosphate, and other mineral commodities. These properties had previously been subject to joint venture between BHP Minerals and Canyon, which was discontinued in 1997. Extensive reconnaissance exploration data on the land positions were produced from this program as well as earlier work by Western Energy Company and The Anaconda Company.
The geology of the northern portion of the 900,000 acres contains meta-sediments belonging to the Proterozoic Belt Basin. These lithologies host stratabound copper-silver deposits, such as Asarco's Troy Mine near Libby, Montana (65 MT @ 1.7 opt Ag and 0.8% Cu) and lead-zinc deposits such as Cominco's Sullivan Mine near Sullivan, B.C. The region also has potential to host skarn, stock work, or stratabound gold targets. In addition, a number of industrial mineral deposits of varying types are known to exist on these property positions.
The geology of the southern portion is composed of Proterozoic Belt sediments, Paleozoic carbonates, and Tertiary intrusive and extrusive lithologies. The area contains numerous west northwest trending wrench faults of the Lewis and Clark Line combined with a system of Laramide age thrusts cutting a complete section of Proterozoic-Belt stratigraphy. Numerous small, Cretaceous through Tertiary plugs, stocks, and sills are present. Placer deposits of unknown bedrock origin have been worked along major structural features and suggest the possibility of structurally hosted gold targets. This environment is also prospective for many other deposit types including porphyry copper systems, gold skarns, and sediment hosted gold related to intrusive as well as stratabound deposits of the Troy-type (Cu-Ag) and Sullivan-type (sedex Pb-Zn). The Lewis and Clark line is a structural zone of weakness known to host many of Montana's precious and base metal deposits. Other exploration models applicable to the region include the McDonald gold property, the Golden Sunlight Mine (+50 Mt @ .05 opt Au), the Coeur d'Alene lead-zinc-silver district, and the Butte porphyry copper deposit.
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