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| Mineralized terrains of Wyoming (after Hausel and Hausel, 2011). |
Little was known about gold in Wyoming when I began research on the geology and mineral deposits of the Cowboy State; thus, I set out to map, evaluate, & find more gold, and it almost seems like I discovered gold nearly everywhere I looked. I was amazed at how much had been overlooked - me and my small team even found anomalous gold in a paleo-drainage in the Laramie City landfill! I published a few compendiums for prospectors & geologists, & mapped several mining districts that were previously unmapped or only partially mapped. I even found a previously unrecognized ultramafic massif with significant palladium, nickel gold & copper mineralization & a whole new district.
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| 34-ounce nugget recovered from the Rock Creek placer, South Pass district, Wyoming. |
There are many great stories & memories about discoveries & prospectors I met. Hopefully, I will be able to find time to write a book about these, as such stories should be preserved. There are stories about hundreds of nuggets in ball jars in Shorty Haddenham's trailer at Atlantic City, dozens of nuggets found by a Ft. Collins prospector, a prospector who spent one entire winter jumping a claim & panning out barrels of mica thinking he had found the Mother Lode & my research along the UP corridor- we found gold everywhere including the Laramie City dump.
I mapped the South Pass greenstone belt at the southern tip of the Wind River Mountains which included several historic gold districts: Lewiston, South Pass, Atlantic City, Miners Delight & others. I identified several hundred gold anomalies & found gold was structurally controlled in reef ore shoots that are very rich down plunge. One deposit I mapped (Carissa) is a major deposit 1000 ft wide, 1200 ft long & probably continuous a few thousand feet downdip. This deposit was withdrawn by the legislature without any scientific review - such abuse of political power literally took away a mountain of gold & many good jobs.
Geology led me to many discoveries. The Rattlesnake Hills were an obvious target, so in 1981, armed with the concept that the RH were part of a fractured greenstone belt intruded by Tertiary alkalic volcanic rocks, I knew there had to be gold. And I found gold in the Rattlesnake Hills in veins, shears, Tertiary breccia, stockworks, pyrite. I also found significant gold elsewhere in Wyoming - Seminoe Mountains, Mineral Hill, Purgatory Gulch, more.
