Moonlight Claims

Photo - Boats would bring in supplies and people to Stewart

The original Moonlight and Northern claims were located in 1929 by the North-Western Prospectors Syndicate, which was taken over in 1930 by North-Western Aerial Prospectors, Ltd.

The Pass, Northern, Moonlight, and Camp located claims explored by the latter group were between 3,300 feet and 5,000 feet elevation along the west side of Kimball Lake, a fluctuating, periodic lake near the head of American Creek and just east of the main spire of Mount Mitre. These claims were immediately west of the Virginia K group of Crown-granted claims located on the east side of American Creek.

The area was originally reached by road from Stewart to the American Creek bridge and then by horse trail, a total of about 27 miles from Stewart. The bridge and trail have largely disappeared and the best approach is now by helicopter.

Country rocks in the area are folded Bowser siltstones with intercalated limestones, greywackes, and quartzites which are found as a narrow strip along American Creek and Kimball Lake and overlie green Hazelton volcanic sandstones, breccias, and tuffs. Shearing occurs along the western side of the claims at the eastern edge of the snow and ice. Various small dykes cut all the country rocks.

Mineralization has been explored by trenches and cuts at eight locations, revealing quartz-sulphide veins and replacement sulphide deposits in both the Bowser and Hazelton members.

Both northeasterly and northwesterly trending zones occur and the quartz-calcite stringers and veins are generally accompanied by pyrite, galena, sphalerite, minor chalcopyrite, and scattered tetrahedrite.

Native gold wasidentified in the main northeast zone west of the lake along the volcanic siltstone contact. Some high-grade ore was reportedly shipped from the showings in 1935, but there are no records to indicate amounts.

In 1937, 61.4 pounds of gold ore from one of the small quartz-calcite veins was shipped to the Trail smelter and assayed 387.8 ounces gold and 164.4 ounces silver per ton.

In 1938 the property was taken over by Napco Gold Mines, Ltd., who did a small amount of trenching and drove 50 feet of adit. The property was inactive until 1966 when Frontier Exploration Limited extended the old workings and prospected the area.

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