MacKay Mining District, Custer County, Idaho, USA.

Claim Information: A New Hope Mining Claim is located in the Challis National Forest, the New Hope Mine gets its name (and hopefully prosperity) from the nearby Star Hope Mine. The road up to the mine is best ascended in a high clearance vehicle. The area is surrounded by beautiful boreal forest with little underbrush, probably good hunting ground as we saw a few hunters out there as we were surveying. There is access to water via the Star Hope Creek which passes through the claim. We discovered possible remnants of a shaft or building near the creek. There are so much tailings and wood mixed together it suggests something was here, but it’s not easy to tell exactly what it was. There is limited room for staging equipment at the mine entrance but there are plenty of areas that could be used within the claim area itself. There are several tailings piles, and one that appears to be a high grade pile. The tailings are somewhat overgrown with grass and shrub. A high clearance vehicle is required to access the site and parking is available next to mine. The Mine: A New Hope Mine consists of one small adit that might have dropped into a shaft or winze immediately past the opening, but it is partially collapsed so that the floor is concealed. If there wasn't shaft or similar feature, it is possible that this was nothing more than an exploratory tunnel that either never warranted digging further in or production stopped for some other reason. Another interesting observation is that the tailings/dump pile immediately adjacent from the entrance is rather large and does not seem to reflect the small amount of workings just described. There is a bit of timbering around the entrance and some of the sides with one side having a peculiar amount of loose rock behind it. We could not observe the wall rock beyond the loose rock, suggesting that it could possibly be a false wall. What we do know is that there is more to this mine than what we could immediately access during our brief stay.

Host/wall rock: limestone/dolomite with extensive calcite veins crisscrossing throughout.
Mineral deposits: nothing observed besides a little iron staining and lots of host rock.

The Alder Creek district, also known as the Mackay or White Knob District, is in southeastern Custer County near Mackay. Ores rich in copper and gold were discovered in this district in 1884, after the rich lead-silver discoveries at Nicholia to the northeast at the site of the district’s chief mine, the Empire (Ross, 1930a). After many failures to produce copper and after the expenditure of about $3 million, success was finally achieved in 1905 (Umpleby, 1917,), and the mine remained active through 1929. Sporadic production was also reported from 1940 through 1951. Mining resumed in 1957 continued through 1959.

From 1884 to 1913 the Empire produced about $100,000 (about 5,000 ounces) in byproduct gold (Umpleby, 1917). The Empire and Horseshoe mines produced 24,710 ounces from 1912 through 1928 (Ross, 1930a), and the district produced 3,770 ounces from 1939 through 1959. Total gold production for the district through 1959 was about 33,500 ounces.