Gold, Silver PM's Rich Mines, Utah

[GOLDENBOLLOX]

History of Gold Mining on the Henry Mountains

The Henry Mountian Range is a remote and rugged area that lies just south of the little town of Hanksville, Utah. John Wesley Powell and his 1869 expedition noted the rugged mountain range and towering peaks in his journals. He dispatched the geologists for short discovery trips up and out of the river canyon and had drawings done on some of the unique looking mesa and uplifted sandstone formations associtated with the birth of the Henry Mountains.

The Powell expeditions also noted well worn pack trails marking there way towards the mountains from the Colorado River. John Powell named the mountain range after his colleague Mr. Joseph Henry, a geoligist and physict doing the feild work on the expeditions.

The Henry Mountains were the last undiscovered mountain ranges in the United States at that time. Powell named alot of the peaks of the range after the expedition members. A short time later another expedition led by John. C. Fremont entered the remote area of the Henry Mountains to do goverment studies and mineralogy reports.

The Fremont River was named for this expedition. Fremont and his party found a large well worn trail from the Colorado River near it's confluence with the Green River. They found many steps cut deep within the sandstone where many pack animals had worn paths. At the top of the trail they found dead pack mules with old Spanish horse packs still attached to the animals.

When Fremont opened the packs they were full of high grade ore, they had obviously came from the mountains to the west of him the Henry Mountian Range. Fremont followed the trail the mules were on and noticed heavy spanish occupation from long ago. Going on to the Fremont River Valley outside of the town of Hanksville today.

In 1877 G. K. Gilbert was sent down to do geological evaluation by the University on the Henry Mountains. Gilbert has been credited with the first descriptions of the lacolithic and bysolithic nature of the Henry Mountains. His theory talked about how the Henrys are unique in the way they were formed in comparison of the other known mountain systems of that era.

His hypothesis was that the hot fluid granites that were upthrusting from the inner earth, came into contact with the sedimentary rocks and altered them with minerals. Huge Breccia pipe like mountain stocks could mushroom out under the sedimentary and then late erode out exposing the lacolith or bysolith. Gilbert also noted activity in the gold bearing Cresent Creek area and the Bromide Basin.

This was in 1877 when there were little settlements in the entire area. In his journal Gilbert describes huge well worn trails all over the Henry Mountains.

Because many of the streams entering Glenn Canyon of the Colorado River, came from the direction of the Henry Mountains, it wasn't long before some of the prospectors began to cast their eyes to the mountains. Jack Summer who had been with Powells expedition in 1869, along with JW Wilson, began prospecting the bench gravels along Cresent Creek.

It was not long before the first placer operations was implemented due to the course nugget gold that was immediately discovered. They gradually worked there way upstream, and in 1889 found a gold bearing fissure vein near the head of the Cresent Creek. They named the fissure the surrounding basin, the Bromide Basin. Due to the ore being similar to the Bromine structures that they had been prospecting in Colorado previously. They were wrong on the naming but the name had stuck to the area and no one ever changed it.

This discovery launched a gold rush and the Bromide Mine was born as well as Eagle City, the boom town at the mouth of the Cresent Creek where it connects the upper alluvial fan gravels of the placer mines of Eagle Bench. Two hundred men worked the mines which included large placering operations around and below Eagle City.

Cornealious Ekker and Frank Lawler were primary holders of the placer mines from the early days clear until modern times. Larger nuggets were found plentiful and a abundance of free milling fine gold. Even the black sands and concentrates produced gold values. Limited water resources seemed to be the only draw back to the operations.

Cornealious and Frank obtained all water rights of Cresent Creek during their ownership of the placer lands. They had also come across a seperate and richer ore body that they named the Million Dollar Gulch. The problem in the gulch was that Cresent Creek and the valuable water needed to operate there placer was a good distance away.

The solution they came up with was to build a reservoir and ditch system. It took a few years hard labor and a lot of workers most of which were Cornealious's 10 sons, but the project was completed. They had constructed a diversion of Cresent Creek and a small reservoir to hold the spring snowmelt and runoff. Then they constructed a long ditch over 3 miles to another big holding pond near the head of the rich Million Dollar Gulch ore site.

The second pond was named ( The Spud Patch Pond.) because the main placer camp was established near there and the mothers and wives had planted gardens. They were growing all kinds of fresh vegtables including a large amount of spuds or potatoes. The men would work all day and the women would cook and clean. The times were tough in those early years due to the Depression and the Cold Wars. These kinds of job arrangements were welcomed and all the families flourished. The wars had taken its toll on the upper hardrock mines and Eagle City was becoming abandoned at the end of the mining season. The Depression hit and money could not be raised to repair the mill. That was the end of the active mining operations on the Bromide Basin.

Around 1943 Frank Lawler gained the properties of the upper mountains and no development was done after that because Frank liked his privacy and decided against another gold rush. After Cornealious died his sons took over the placer operations, and through the years did some work with good success. The limited water during the drought years was still a major problem for the placer.

Charles B. Hunt, a noted Utah Geologist, wrote a professional paper in 1953 called the geology of the Henry Mountains. In his report "At the Ekker-Lawler placer deposits flakes of gold are abundant and commonly half a millimeter in diameter but flakes 2mm long and a millimeter thick are not uncommon. The gold occurs in thick black sand streaks throughout the alluvial gravels.

Concentrates were sampled and found to contain magnatite, hemotite, illiminite, good quanities of platinum, and several varieties of rare earth. Ekker and Lawler estimate that the deposit worked thus far has produced somewhere between 1.00 to 2.00 per yard in gold values and 20 to 30 cents per yard in platinum. The mine has used the mint in Denver, Colorado for refinement of the mines production for several years. Total production since 1914 has exceeded $10,000.00 at the mint officially Ekker states that we can double that due to the Depression and the loss of the currency made the mine pay the families in gold rather than cash or payrolls."

The Ekker family sold the property and now Martinque Mining Corporation owns all of the lower placer and upper high grade mines. The property has been mined on a limited basis for the past hundred years. We continue to assay and test the ore bodies on the Henry Mountains all of our work has indicated a very viable mining project.