Ian Foreman
Farshad Shirvani, President and CEO of Casa Minerals, said: [TSX-V: CASA; OTC: CASXF; GER: 0CM], is a decisive individual. He loves hard deals. And he found just that in the complicated ownership of the Congress Gold property in Arizona.
In 2018, I first became aware of this estate that houses a historic high-grade gold mine. He eventually succeeded in bringing together a diverse group of owners in 2021, selling his 90% ownership interest in Congress Gold Mine to Casa He Minerals.
The eponymous Congress Gold Mine is located near the town of Congress in the Martinez Mining District of Yavapai County, Arizona, north of Phoenix. The company recently expanded the size of its estate comprising contiguous areas of 14 patent claims (approximately 306 acres) and 25 mineral claims (approximately 494 acres).
The Congress Mine began production in 1887 and operated at various intervals over the decades. The mine reached its zenith between 1906 and 1910 when the mine reached a depth of 4,000 feet (1,219 meters), and was produced locally from the Council, Niagara and Queen of the Hills deposits to 7 ounces per tonne. Mainly used graded high-grade gold. Work includes three shafts in the Congress Vein, three in the Niagara Vein and six in the Queen of the Hills Vein. These shafts dipped about 22 to 25 degrees from horizontal and had drifts of up to 12 to 15 feet.
The ore was brought to the surface using a combination of 12 steam-powered lifts. This full-scale mining operation utilized a reduction plant, a concentration plant, and a cyanide plant that included a roaster and leaching tanks to process the ore. According to various reports, the mine produced 426,000 ounces of gold from 388,000 ounces in its early years, making Congress Mine one of the more productive historic gold mines in Arizona.
The veins tend to be coarse-grained, massive greyish-white quartz, with irregular clumps, bands, and interspersed with fine-grained iron sulfide. Ore zones commonly occur as flat lenses, reportedly pinching and bulging near the footwall.
According to historical accounts of the mine, the Council Vein itself is characterized as a “green stone trap embankment”, and the mined ore passes through this embankment, with the most valuable mineral deposits lodged on or near it. It turns out that there is foot wall. In current geological interpretations, the Congress and Niagara quartz veins cut through aged coarse-grained biotite granites of Precambrian age and are usually variably identified as aplitic, pegmatite, andesite, mafic, and greenstone. It is said that it is related to the embankment that is The vein was reportedly tracked over an estimated 1,800 feet (549 meters). Multiple nearly parallel veins and offshoots were identified and partially utilized, the largest being the Niagara vein.
Disused for decades before Casa’s purchase, the property suffered limited development work by Echo Bay Mines in the mid-1980s when it dropped to the 2200 level. As a result of this work, Echo Bay Mines reported a “current ore reserve” of 400,000 to 500,000 tonnes in the Niagara Prospect, grading 0.3 ounces of gold per tonne. Since the calculation predates National Instrument 43-101, the company treats it as a historical resource, as it has not undergone sufficient work to confirm or verify it. Malartic Hygrade US Inc., an affiliate of Republic Goldfields Inc., then purchased the property in his 1989, continuing where Echo Bay Mines left off. Poorly preserved records indicate that the mine may have produced 75,000 ounces from these combined operations. The last documented work on the property was done in 1992.
Since purchasing the Congress property, Casa has compiled all available technical data and worked on a comprehensive geological model of the property. The company entered several historic destinations and surveyed the waste to assess mineralization that would have been uneconomical in the early 1900s. The work came to the conclusion that there are several gold, silver and copper exploration targets near the historical work laterally and along strike. Additionally, the company believes there are several other properties that need additional work.
The company recently completed a Phase 1 diamond drill program for a total of 6,828 feet (2081 meters) of headquarters-sized cores. This first drilling program was designed to corroborate historical data and generate up-to-date information on the geology and mineralization of gold-bearing structures. In addition, a drilling program was designed to explore nearby unexplored areas identified as having similar geological features to the Congress and Niagara deposits.
The drilling intersected the previously productive Congressional and Niagara veins and successfully discovered new previously unreported venous structures.
“We are very pleased to have completed the first phase of this drilling. Our aim is to advance the Congress Mine in a multi-stage exploration and development program. We are moving towards re-establishing it as a potentially productive gold mine,” Silvani commented.
The highest gold intercept analysis results were hole CCG-004 with 14.9 g/t over 1.5 meters and 9.3 g/t over 3 meters as part of a larger intercept of 3.5 g/t over 10.7 meters. It was CCG-004.
In addition to Congress, the company has two wholly owned projects in British Columbia. Pitman/Paddy Mack and Keeper. As well as his 75% interest in the Arsenault Project. The company plans to investigate a Canadian project in 2023.
The Pitman/Paddy Mac site covers 5,505 hectares and is located approximately 25 kilometers north of the Terrace. Casa extensively sampled this project from 2005 to 2017 and developed a sizable silver-copper-molybdenum porphyry target. Recent sampling has returned very high quality results from a set of previously unrecognized veins. A two foot wide vein returned 574.42 g/t gold and 109 g/t silver, as well as 0.1% copper, 1.56% lead and 0.23% zinc. A 3-foot-wide vein was analyzed for 268.86 g/t gold and 127 g/t silver, as well as 0.2% copper, 2.95% lead, and 0.04% zinc. A 1 foot wide vein was analyzed for 50.83 g/t gold, trace copper, 0.21% lead and 0.02% zinc.
The occurrence of Pitman molybdenite was recognized by Joe Bell in 1957. Exploration for molybdenum took place over the next few decades, including work by Canex Canadian Exploration (later Placer Development) and his drilling program by his E&B Exploration Ltd. in 1979, where various assays from 0.002% MoS Got it.2 ~0.25% MoS2containing 0.119% MoS at 6m2The strength of the current molybdenum price makes it an attractive exploration target.
The Arseneau property is located on the northern border of British Columbia, southeast of the Swift River in the Yukon Territory. This is a Vesi-type volcanic giant sulfide target and has undergone extensive soil and rock surveys conducted by the previous operator and further soil, rock and airborne electromagnetic surveys conducted by the company since 2006. ready for drilling. The VMS1 zone contains 1.74% copper, 0.98 g/t gold and 24.1 g/t silver, as high as 0.54% copper in soil.
