The Mineral Ridge gold deposits are located on the northeast flank of the Silver Peak Mountain Range. This range lies in the southern reaches of the Great Basin, within the Walker Lane structural corridor. Walker Lane is a 100-km-wide region of right lateral, wrench-faulting which separates the Sierra Nevada batholith to the west and southwest and the Great Basin to the east and northeast.
Mineral Ridge is an anticlinal dome found on the eastern flank of the Silver Peak Range. It has been interpreted as an uplifted metamorphic core complex where unmetamorphosed and unfolded Cambrian strata are in detachment-fault contact with underlying deformed granitoids and Precambrian metamorphic rocks of the core complex. Auriferous quartz lenses of the central gold-quartz district are concordant with foliation in the metasedimentary host rocks of the Precambrian Wyman Formation. Transitional contacts were observed between quartz and alaskite (commonly pegmatitic), and between alaskite and peraluminous two-mica granite, strongly suggesting that the alaskite, quartz, and ore metals were derived hydrothermally from residual granite melt and aqueous fluids.
The property is located on a typical "Nevada Structural System" which is known to control gold mineralization.
To date, seven well-defined gold bearing structures have been documented on the property as follows:
- The North-Northeast Eagles Nest Fault
- The North-Northeast Coyote Fault
- The Northwest BW Normal Fault
- The North-Northwest Gillian Fault
- The Northeast Mary/Drinkwater Cross Fault
- The North-Northwest Mary/Drinkwater Cross Fault
- The North-Northwest Black Warrior Intersection Fault
The known mineralized zones occur over an area of approximately 4,300 m (14,000 ft) north-south and 4,600 m (15,000 ft) east-west. Individual zones can be as much as 43 m (140 ft) thick, usually consisting of a higher-grade 1.5 to 9.0 m wide halo surrounded by a lower-grade mineralized envelope. Two or more high-grade zones are commonly observed stacked on one another. Gold deposition is structurally controlled, and some of the highest grade material is found in mineralization shoots that are at an oblique angle to the direction of movement of the upper plate slab.
Gold is present as native gold and electrum, and generally occurs as rounded, angular, irregularly shaped and elongated inclusions and intergrowths in quartz, frequently associated with micaceous minerals or carbonates occupying interspatial spaces or fracture filling. Gold is also frequently associated with goethite, sometimes with relict pyrite, and on occasions intergrown with sphalerite, galena, anglesite/cerrusite and pyrite.
