Barber Canyon Placer

The claims are located in Pershing County, Nevada, USA. The town of Winnemucca which has ample lodging, supermarkets, and restaurants is approximately a 40 minute drive away. The nearest gas station/store is 9 miles to the West along Highway 80. Reno is approximately 2.5 hours away.

A dirt road runs along the length of the claims providing access for equipment to essentially every part of the canyon.

The property is accessible and can be mined year round. Snow may be an issue for a few days but usually melts quickly. The elevation is 5400 feet.

The channel has an average width of 300 feet. From surface to bedrock the gravels usually range from 18 to 40 feet thick. The gold in the canyon is reported to be of high purity with a fineness of 875. The gold is concentrated on the bedrock but even the surface gravels carry good values. As the gold originated from sources in the near vicinity it has not traveled far and therefore is quite coarse. The gold bearing gravel is easily mined and there are very few large boulders to deal with. To get access to the best paying material the top 5-10 feet of gravel can be stripped aside. Geologist, Henry Ott, reported a large yardage of the gravel below this surface material to run $1.00-$3.00/yard at a gold price of $35/ounce. The equivalent of $35-$107/yard at today’s gold price of $1250. Coarse gold nuggets are common in the district so unprocessed material and old tailings should be gone over with metal detectors to recover large pieces of gold missed be earlier miners. Nuggets can also be sold at a premium compared to other types of gold. A water source can be obtained from a spring on the property currently being utilized as a cattle trough. Ott’s report describes the lower canyon as containing water sufficient enough to supply a large operation. Henry Ott wished to operate a dragline dredge on the property in the 1960s which he estimated would recover over 60 ounces of gold per day. However, it does not appear that the operation ever took place. A currently operating placer mine is located in the adjacent Dun Glen Canyon. United Resource Holdings Group anticipates gold production from the operation to be at least 19 ounces per day.

The erosion of numerous lode gold deposits over millions of years formed extensive placer deposits in Dun Glen and Barber Canyons. Mining commenced in these canyons in the 1860s and it is estimated that around 200,000 ounces of gold was recovered in the early decades much of it coming from Barber Canyon. The placers were worked by hand mining methods including sluicing and drywashing as well as some small hydraulic operations in the 1930s. The district is said to be one of the richest placer areas in the State.

Extensive sampling was conducted in the mid twentieth century on the gravels in Barber Canyon. The work identified several million yards of material that contained $1,600,000 in gold at $35 per ounce in the main wash of Barber Canyon. That is approximately 45,000 ounces or $56,250,000 at a gold price of $1250 per ounce. Additionally, the exploration concluded that another five to six million yards of bench gravel alongside the main channel contained values of +.0228 ounces per yard.