Paleoplacer Gold Project
The Paleoplacer Gold Project consists of a total of 365 mineral acres covering approximately 5,700 feet of the projected northward extension of the Homestake Paleoplacer Channel Trend in the western portion of Lawrence County, South Dakota, USA. More specifically the claims lie within the Black Hills Meridian, Township 5N, Range3E covering portions of Sections 20 and 21.
Dakota acquired its original 14 unpatented Homestake Paleoplacer claims from Black Hills Gold Exploration LLC in December 2012. Dakota owns a 100% interest in the 14 unpatented claims with no known encumbrance of any kind. There are no known private surface rights owners within the bounds of the property with all surface rights under the control of the US Forest Service. Annual claim maintenance fees are $165 per claim, or a total of $2,310 total for the 14 claims that comprise the original Homestake Paleoplacer Property. Annual claim maintenance fees are due before September 1st of each year.
Notice must be filed with and approved by the BLM, the USFS, and the SDDANR prior to undertaking any exploration activities. The notice describes the proposed exploration activities and any remedial reclamation deemed necessary. The various government agencies review the application to ensure there will be no deleterious impacts as a result of activity on the claims prior to granting any approvals for the proposed work.
In February 2014, Dakota entered into an agreement to acquire surface and mineral title to 26.16 acres of the Squaw and Rubber Neck Lodes that comprise Mineral Survey 1706 in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The property is located immediately to the north and adjoining Dakota’s 14 original unpatented claims group and was explored by Homestake Mining Company in the 1980’s.
In March 2014, Dakota successfully closed a transaction with Deadbroke Mining Company, Inc. to purchase approximately 565.24 mineral acres in the Northern Black Hills of South Dakota. As part of the Deadbroke Mining Company Inc. property acquisition, Dakota purchased an additional 64.39 mineral acres located immediately southwest and contiguous to Dakota’s original unpatented claims group, including the historic Gustin, Minerva and Deadbroke Gold Mines.
In April 2017, Dakota added an additional 141 acres of mineral property to the Homestake Paleoplacer Property through an Exploration and Mining Lease and Option to Purchase Property Agreement with Trucano Novelty Inc., of South Dakota. The property acquisition is located immediately north and contiguous to the original Homestake Paleoplacer Property.
Access to the property is gained by traveling 0.75 miles west-northwest from Central City along the Maitland Road (Forest Service 195). Alternately, the area can be accessed by traveling approximately 1.75 miles west-northwest from the City of Deadwood on the Mount Roosevelt Road (Forest Service 133).
The first significant Black Hills gold event occurred approximately 1.74 billion years ago, depositing gold in the Homestake iron-formation. From the time of iron-formation gold deposition, Proterozoic erosion removed approximately 30,000 feet of rock from the earth’s crust and exposed the Homestake lode to an erosional event that distributed gold into drainages on the regolith surface forming high-grade gold paleoplacer deposits. The Homestake Paleoplacer deposit is characterized by gold bearing quartz pebble conglomerates, similar to the Jacobina conglomerate gold deposits of Bahia, Brazil, that were deposited to the north and away from the elevated exposure of the mineralized Homestake iron-formation source lode. Multi-ounce per ton gold grades were historically not uncommon to paleoplacer deposits, principally because the source gold lode was up graded by lateritic weathering processes prior to erosion and distribution of the gold into the ancient paleochannels.
560 million years ago, the Cambrian seas advanced and deposited marine sediments that eventually covered the primordial Black Hills highlands and sealed the paleoplacer gold deposits under cover.
Tertiary-age rhyolite intrusive rocks dominate the outcrop on the Homestake Paleoplacer Property, along with limited outcrops of Cambrian Deadwood formation contained within the rhyolite intrusive. The rhyolite is in the form of a sill/laccolith, 50 to 500 feet thick, that overlies the basal quartz pebble conglomerate units of Deadwood formation and the extensions of gold bearing paleoplacer sourced from the Homestake
Lode.
Dakota’s Paleoplacer Property includes the past producing Gustin, Minerva and Deadbroke Mines, which were the last three mines that produced from the channel and are located furthest to the north at the point where the channel disappears under the cover of the younger Cambrian sedimentary and Tertiary igneous rocks. The Deadbroke Mine began operations in the earliest days of the 1870’s Black Hills Gold
Rush and continued to produce gold through the 1920’s by underground room and pillar methods at depths ranging from 100 to 200 feet below surface.
In 1973, Homestake Mining Company entered into a mining lease on the Deadbroke Property, based on interest generated by a report authored by Homestake Geologist, Ross R. Grunwald and entitled “Ore Potential of The Deadbroke Mine and Other Northern Black Hills Conglomerate Ores”. In 1974, Homestake dewatered the Deadbroke Mine and conducted a comprehensive mine mapping and sampling program. A total of 214 channel samples were collected by Homestake Geologists from the perimeter of accessible stope and development headings, as well as from pillars left in stopes. The results of the 1974 Deadbroke Mine sampling program led to a subsequent 27-hole drill program in the 1980’s designed to explore for the extension of the paleochannel north of the Deadbroke Mine.