1300, 1500, & 1700 levels near stope 1557, Sixteen-to-One Mine, Alleghany, California: Supplement 7 from "Spectrographic study of gold-quartz ores from Alleghany, California" (Thesis)

An investigation of the miner constituents in gold-quartz ores of the Sixteen-to-One mine, Alleghany, California, was undertaken with the hope that the distribution of the minor metals might be of some use in locating ore bodies. Before commencing such a study it was necessary to establish a practical technique for qualitative and quantitative spectrographic analysis of quartz ores. The commercial gold ore of the Sixteen-to-One mine occurs as isolated, irregular masses of gold-bearing quartz in a large vein of barren quartz. No reliable structural or mineralogical control or indicator for ore-finding is known for this mine. There are several indicators which, when combined under favorable circumstances, may indicate ore, but they are not individually consistent, and may fail to indicate ore as often as not. Previous work by H. J. Fraser (unpublished) on ore from the Mojave district, California, By H. D. B. Wilson (1941) on Goldfield, Nevada, ores, and R. M. Dreyer (1939) on cinnabar ores indicated that the minor metals in such deposits showed a zonal arrangement around some ore bodies. These examples are epithermal in type, whereas the Sixteen-to-One is mesothermal and similar in many ways to Mother Lode gold-quartz veins. The extremely haphazard distribution of gold values made the Sixteen-to-One a desirable type of mesothermal deposit for investigation. Preliminary results obtained by Dehlinger indicated that the distribution of silver, bismuth, lead and tin appeared to show some correlation with that of gold. Accordingly, the present investigation was undertaken to obtain further information throughout the mines of the manner in which these four metals are distributed