St Eugene Mine EarthCache
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The St. Eugene mine is located 1.5 kilometres southeast of Moyie, east of Moyie Lake.
The deposit was recorded in 1893 by James Cronin, who was told of the ore by the Ktunaxa (Kootenai) people.
St. Eugene Consolidated Mining Company conducted early development and in 1905 the mine was taken over by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company.
The deposit consists of two important veins and a system of connecting veins which meet the main vein system at a low angle. Most of the ores occurred at or near such junctions in the form of irregular lenses. Very little displacement was noted along the vein as a whole and they are probably tensional fractures along the crest of a plunging anticline. It was reported that the sulphides (mainly pyrite, pyrrhotite and sphalerite) were slightly more abundant near the margins of the orebodies and that sphalerite showed no increase with depth. At the 305 metre level, the two main veins/fissures are 183 metres apart and converge downwards and towards the west.
Production from 1899 to 1929 totalled 1.5 million tonnes resulting in 182,690,658 grams of silver, 78,846 grams of gold, 113,034,479 kilograms of lead and 14,482,913 kilograms of zinc.
Total Value of the ore mined from this site was in excess of $10,000,000.
With new Mining Techniques the remaining ore at he site is once again garnering the interest of mining companies from across the country.
To log this cache please email the cache owner the answers to the following questions do not post in your log.
1) From this viewpoint how many abandoned buildings make up the site?
2) Please estimate the height of the ridge that the mine occupied?
Please post a picture of you or your GPS with the mine in the background from the viewpoint..
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