The Ash Quicksilver Prospect

Ash Prospect


Alternate Names: None
Drainage Area: Brush Creek
Major Commodities: Quicksilver
Trace Commodities:
Host Rock: Limonite
Legal Description: 33 South, 1 West, Sections 35 and 36; 34 South, 1 West, Section 1
Elevation: 


Sometime during the 1930's, E.E. Ash located this group of quicksilver claims upstream of Trail, Oregon on Bear Mountain, across the Rogue River from what is commonly reffered to as Rogue-Elk. Ash only performed assessment work on the claim.


The workings at this mine included an open cut and three adits in the neighborhood of fifty feet in length each which were located on the northwest side of Brush Creek. The cut was located 100 feet above the Rogue River, while the highest adit (Number 4) is 700 feet above the river. An additional 36 foot deep shaft with a 12 foot drift is located fifty feet above the Number 4 adit.


Wells and Water reported that: "The rocks in all these workings are altered volcanic flows, in which the the original feldspar phenocrysts have changed to white spots of clay in a gray-lavander groundmass. Very irregular iron ribs as much as one and a half inches wide cut the rock. Limonite-stained chalcedony similar to the iron ribs occurs also as spherical masses two to three inches in diameter with a hollow center filled with powdery limonite. A fault that strikes South 74 degrees East and dips 85 to 90 degrees South West has been explored by Adit 4 and by the shaft and the 12 foot drift. Some smeared cinnabar was seen on the slickensided fault plane."


Wilkinson shed even more light on the geology reporting that the "country rock is rhyolitic in character, similar to the rhyolite observed on the north side of the river at Berry Rock. It is overlain by a porphyritic basalt which forms a rather flat surface dipping slightly to the west. The rhyolite has been fractured, and along the fractures limonite stain has developed. Drifting has been done along a fault which has a strike of North 65 degrees West. Samples taken show some smeared, paint thin cinnabar."


By 1940, the claims were reported to be under lease to W.N. Brewster and D.C. Anderson who intended to commence drilling in the Fall of 1940.


Sources:


Oregon Metal Mines Handbook: Jackson County, 1943, pg. 44
Advanced Report on Some Quicksilver Prospects in the Butte Falls Quadrangle, Oregon, Wilkinson, 1940


Copyright 2010 by Kerby Jackson