TheNewswire - August 11, 2021 – Providence Gold Mines “the Company” (TSXV:PHD) (OTC:PRRVF) (FSE:7RH1)
is extremely pleased to announce our geologists have identified a potentially significant low bulk tonnage gold target. The Providence Gold Mines properties with numerous high grade historical deposits are located near the historical gold town of Sonora, California.
Preliminary evidence suggests that all lode structures crossing the favorable corridor of fracture dilatancy (the Tuolumne Mines Trend) at all elevations constitute significant exploration gold targets. Our field geological reconnaissance, alteration mapping, soil geochemistry, and subsequent trenching on the extremely steep terrain has been successful in locating lode targets. The zone was sampled for assay and mapped to further define new surface exploration drill targets.
The Providence Gold Mines property is located along the East Belt of gold mines of the Mother Lode system near the city of Sonora, California. The Mother Lode East Belt mines are spatially arranged along the 160 km length of the regional-scale Calaveras-Shoo Fly Thrust Fault and they have accounted for approximately four million ounces of historic gold production.
Mark Payne P.Geo., an expert in the Mother Lode Belt, states, “The East Belt mines are contained within a 10 km by 160 km footprint area and Providence’s historic group of gold mines hosts enormous unexplored gold endowment potential”.
The recent geological fieldwork confirms similar geology to other known low grade Mother Lode gold deposits. Wall rocks have invariably been hydrothermally altered, having been partially to completely converted to ankerite, sericite, quartz, pyrite, chlorite, and albite with traces of rutile and leucoxene (Knopf, 1929). The mineralization is usually adjacent to the veins in ground that has been fractured and contains small stringers and lenses of quartz.
Regional Geology:
The Calaveras-Shoo Fly Thrust Fault is a complexly folded, strongly metamorphosed, and strain-hardened zone of fault zone rocks (mylonite), which developed multiple millions of years prior to the Mother Lode Belt gold mineralization event, during the mid-Jurassic Nevadan Orogeny. The Calaveras-Shoo Fly Thrust was subsequently intruded by the mid-Jurassic Standard dioritic Pluton in the general area of the Providence Mine property. Intrusion of the Standard Pluton is the most important structural feature in the Mother Lode district, as it pertains to gold ore localization.
Several millions of years later, the Mother Lode Belt gold mineralizing event was synchronous with a major regional-scale compressional flattening event during the early Cretaceous period. This compressional flattening event reactivated deep regional-scale fractures associated with the Calaveras-Shoo Fly Thrust and later brittle fractures related to intrusion of the Standard Pluton. Reactivation of the pre-mineralization structures likely provided the deep conduit by which gold-bearing hydrothermal fluids of metamorphic origin (orogenic) could be transported.
The rhombohedral fracture set which hosts the known gold mineralization on the Providence property were probably developed as a mechanical response to the competency contrast between the massive intrusive and bedded meta-sedimentary rocks under right-lateral strike-slip strain. On the property a rhombohedral fracture grid appears to have been developed within an embayment in the southern contact of the Standard Pluton. Although an open antiformal fold in the Calaveras-Shoo Fly Thrust encloses the Providence project on three sides, the fracture sets associated with that deformation episode are likely highly modified curvilinear features which may have reduced relevance as an ore control.
Property-Scale Structural Geology:
The historic high-grade gold production from the Providence Mine property was from steeply plunging chimney-like ore shoots within several moderately eastward dipping N10-20W oriented fault / lodes. There is a well-developed system of strong cross fault / lodes which dip steeply northeast and strike N60-70W. Both types of fault / lode can be traced for considerable distances on the surface by their strong sericite + carbonate alteration signatures. The WNW cross faults have had a pronounced effects upon the morphology of the ore shoots hosted within the NNW striking lodes. At the Providence and McCarthy historic production areas, the ore shoots occur within the NNW striking lodes as twins in drag fold features, arranged on both sides of strong WNW cross fault / lodes.
Mine Trend:
The Providence Gold Mines patented claims were not staked in alignment with the ore-bearing lode structures, but progress obliquely across the rhombohedral grid of lodes. The claims link the gold production points. At the district scale, the arrangement of the NW striking ore-bearing lodes is en echelon and left-stepping with respect to the Tuolumne Mines Trend.
The Tuolumne Mines Trend is interpreted to be a corridor of favorable dilatant fractures developed in a strain shadow above a linear-shaped intrusive salient at depth. A southeasterly trend of small dioritic intrusive plugs is in alignment with the mines trend and suggests the presence of a SE-trending expression of the Standard Pluton at depth.
The current ore target concept for the Providence Mine property suggests that all lode structures crossing through the favorable corridor of fracture dilatancy (the Tuolumne Mines Trend) at all elevation horizons constitute significant exploration targets.
NEXT STEPS:
The Company continues to exploit the significant exploration potential, whilst sourcing plant equipment for the stockpile initiative, and immediate future programmed works.
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