Silvertown group, Squaw Peak, Warner Mountains, Modoc County, California, USAi

Regional Level Types
Silvertown group	- not defined -
Squaw Peak	Peak
Warner Mountains	Mountain Range
Modoc County	County
California	State
USA	Country

The Silvertown group, in the north-central part of T42N, R15E, in the Warner Mountains, Modoc County, California, consists of 5 claims held by Roy Stanley, of Cedarville, California. The claims extend across the mountains from a point near North Deep Creek to South Deep Creek, a distance of nearly a mile, and the lode is said to have been explored, in places, even farther south.

The country rock of the prospects is thick-bedded agglomerate, conglomerate, lava, and tuffaceous sandstone that belong to what has been called the Lower Cedarville formation, of Miocene age. This unit is reported to comprise "from 2,000 to 3,500 feet of andesitic agglomerates, tuffs, conglomerates, intercalated flows, and sediments." The great mass of Tertiary strata that make up the Warner Mountains is reported to have a maximum aggregate thickness of about 5,000 feet. In the vicinity of the Silvertown group the beds trend east of north and dip 10° W. The lode is a silicified fracture zone that trends N20W. and has a steep northeast dip. The rock is more or less silicified over a width of fully 100 feet, but the more intensely mineralized material appears to range in width from a few inches to 20 feet. The workings include shallow cuts and caved tunnels distributed along the length of a claim on the north side of the valley of South Deep Creek and scattered holes farther north. The lode contains films and specks of cinnabar and disseminated grains of pyrite, malachite, and azurite, in altered rock that is in places almost completely, replaced by jasper and sericite. As the mineralized fracture zone traverses the beds obliquely, its country rock is different in different places; much of the zone is in agglomerate, but some of it appears to be in lava. The more thoroughly mineralized portions are reported to contain 0.55 pound of quicksilver with local richer streaks.

The two samples cut by the writer contain 0.04 and 0.01 percent of quicksilver, but these samples were too small to be representative; it seems entirely probable that selective mining would yield ore of higher tenor. The scanty workings accessible at the time of visit suffice only to show that there is a large amount of cinnabar-bearing material. Additional exploration is necessary in order to obtain a satisfactory idea of the commercial
possibilities of the area.