Tinton Gold Project
The Tinton claims consists of a group of 428 unpatented lode-mining claims covering approximately 8,445.78 acres in the western portion of Lawrence County, South Dakota, and Crook County, Wyoming, USA. More specifically the claims lie within the Black Hills Meridian, Township 5N, Range1E covering portions of Sections 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 36, and Township 4N, Range1E covering portions of Sections 3, 4, and 5, and within the 6th Principal Meridian, Township 51 N, Range 60 W covering portions of Sections 21 and 28.
Dakota Gold acquired the original block of 106 claims at Tinton in September 2019. Between October 2020 and July 2021, an additional 322 unpatented claims were staked to surround the original claim block with no known encumbrance of any kind. There are no known private surface rights owners within the bounds of the claims with all surface rights on the unpatented portion of the property under the control of the USFS. The annual claim maintenance fees total $70,620.
Access to the property is gained by traveling 8 miles south-southwest from the City of Spearfish along a series of paved and aggregate secondary roads. A network of these roads cut the claims. Alternative ingress can be gained on similar roads from the town of Lead (via Savoy), located approximately 9 miles east-southeast of the claims. Some of these roads are seasonal, as they are not plowed during the winter months.
Placer gold was first discovered in the Tinton area in 1876 and placer claims in the local drainages have been worked almost continuously up to the present day. No source-lode has yet been located for the modern gold placer deposits.
In the 1990s, Homestake Mining Company undertook an exploration program at Tinton that was based on the deposition models for the paleoplacer and modern placers associated with the Homestake Lode. Preliminary groundwork at that time indicated that the most likely source of the gold originated from an area east of the placer workings, over which a district-wide ground gravity survey was conducted in an effort to locate iron-formation host rocks under the younger limestone beds that dominate the surface in the Tinton area. Based on the results of the geophysical survey, two deep core holes were subsequently drilled with intercepted rocks interpreted to be comparable with the suite of rocks at the site of the Homestake Mine.
Dakota Gold intends to resume the exploration begun by Homestake by building off the substantial work already invested in narrowing the search area. Additional geologic field work is planned for 2024.
