North Star Mine, Kimberley, Fort Steele Mining Division, British Columbia, Canadai

Regional Level Types
North Star Mine	Mine
Kimberley	City
Fort Steele Mining Division	Division
British Columbia	Province
Canada	Country

The North Star Mine was located on the north-east slope of North Star Hill, about 3.2 kilometres west-southwest of the city centre of Kimberley British Columbia, or about 3 kilometres south of now closed Sullivan Mine, in the Fort Steele Mining Division.
There is a description of the property on the British Columbia “Minfile” site, current to 2000. A very brief portion relative to geology is quoted below:
“The host rocks are argillaceous quartzites of the Middle Proterozoic Aldridge Fromation [sic], Purcell Supergroup. The original orebody was a replacement deposit similar to the Sullivan mine (082FNE052). The ore was primarily a very clean and solid argentiferous galena with only a small amount of sphalerite. Wire silver and crystals of cerrusite [sic – cerussite] occur as well as iron sulphides.”
Giles Peatfield comments:
The North Star Mine was a small silver, lead and zinc mine, with some similarities to the great Sullivan orebody just to the north. It is worthy of description because in the upper (near surface) levels the ore was strongly oxidized, with the formation of wire silver and cerussite. It has also (I believe erroneously) been listed as a locality for pyromorphite, which is a relatively uncommon mineral in British Columbia (see note below in the mineral section). A detailed explanation for this apparent error is provided in the “further comments” section below.
The North Star Mine was a modest producer of silver and lead, with a very small amount of zinc in its final year of production. Official figures on the British Columbia “Minfile” site show that between 1895 and 1929, the mine produced a total of 61,330 tonnes (67,604 tons). The total yield from this material is reported as 41,674,193 grams (1,339,856 troy ounces) silver; 21,775,030 kilograms (48,005,724 pounds) lead and 6,304 kilograms (13,898 pounds) zinc.
Giles Peatfield comments on the minerals reported:
Several workers, early and recent, have described the mineralogy of the North Star Mine. I have chosen to comment on all minerals reported, and comment on two that have been reported for the mine, apparently erroneously.
Actinolite: Turner et al. (2000) reported ‘iron-rich actinolite’ in siltstone.
Calcite: Reported by Schofield (1915), who described it as occurring ‘sparingly’.
Cerussite: This is the mineral of most mineralogical interest at the mine. Thomson (1918) described the crystallography of several crystals. Schofield (1915) wrote that “Cerussite is white and colourless, and occurs in the oxidized zone of the North Star and Society Girl mines, mainly in the form of crystals and crystal aggregates, but often compact and massive, coating the surfaces alone fissures.” The Pacific Museum of Earth at the University of British Columbia has a specimen (#6831, acquired from the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria) of native silver with cerussite from the mine. Hoffmann (1899) noted that among the specimens donated to the collection of the Museum of the Geological Survey was one described as “Cerussite, from the North Star mine, Mark Creek, East Kootenay District, B.C.”, donated by R. R. Willimot, Fort Steele, B.C. (not to be confused with C. W. Willimot, collector of minerals for the Geological Survey). This occurrence is listed in Johnston (1915) and in Traill (1970, 1983).
Chalcopyrite: Höy et al. (2000) mentioned that chalcopyrite occurred in the sulfide ore, but gave no details.
Feldspar Group: Turner et al. (2000) reported ‘minor microcline’ in siltstone.
Galena: Höy et al. (2000) described the galena at North Star as ‘primarily massive, fine-grained argentiferous galena.’; Schofield (1915), on the other hand, wrote, regarding galena in the district, that “In general, it is the fine grained, steely variety, so well known in the Sullivan ore-deposit; but it often occurs as the coarse cubic variety which constituted the ore-bodies of the North Star and St. Eugene.”
Garnet Group: Turner et al. wrote that “Pale pink garnet occurs as disseminations in centimtre-scale layers within argillaceous beds approximately 90 m and 250 m below the North Star deposit . . . . Garnets comprise up to 40% of the thin layers and are classified as coticule.” Slack et al. (2000) described this material in more detail, noting that “Coticules (fine-grained spessartine-quartz rocks) are important lithologies at the Sullivan and North Star deposits.”
Limonite: Schofield (1915) reported that limonite was “. . . especially prominent in the North Star and Society Girl mines, as a product of the decomposition of the sulphides of iron.”
Mica Group: Turner et al. (2000) noted muscovite, biotite and iron-rich biotite in inter-bedded siltstone layers.
Pyrite: This is ubiquitous, and noted by all workers.
Pyrrhotite: This is reported by Höy et al. (2000) and by Turner et al. (2000). Interestingly, Schofield (1915) did not specifically mention pyrrhotite at North Star, but this was probably an oversight on his part.
Quartz: Reported by Schofield (1915). Höy et al. (2000) wrote that “It [the massive sulfide layer] is underlain by laminated siltstone that contains pyrrhotite laminae, irregular quartz, galena, sphalerite veins, and abundant manganiferous garnet.”
Silver: This was an important mineral in the early mining of the North Star deposit. Schofield (1915) wrote that “Native silver occurred in the oxidized zone in the North Star mine as arborescent and reticulated aggregates in cavities in limonite.” See note above for cerussite regarding the Pacific Museum of Earth specimen of this material.
Sphalerite: This is commonly reported for the deposit, but does not appear to be abundant enough to form an important source of zinc from the deposit.
Tourmaline: This is reported by Turner et al. (2000), and described in detail by Slack et al. (2000). They did not list specific compositional data in their paper. Tourmalinites are common in the region, and some workers attempt to use them as marker horizons.
Some further comments are necessary:
Turner et al. (2002) mentioned that in dump material from the North Star operation, “Minor native bismuth-antimony alloys occur with the sulphides.” Unfortunately, they gave no more specific compositional data, so I have not included this material in the mineral listing.

Now we come to the problem of two other minerals that have been (I believe erroneously) attributed to the North Star deposit:
The first of these is pyromorphite. The story begins with Bowles (1909), who studied material from the Society Girl mine, nearly 50 kilometres to the south. Thomson (1918) measured the crystallography of cerussite from the North Star Mine, from the Society Girl Mine, and from the Ymir and Yankee Girl Mines at Ymir, south of Nelson. Without being more specific, he wrote that “The minerals associated with cerussite in these localities include galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, malachite, pyromorphite, garnet, quartz, and calcite.” Note that nothing in what he wrote says that all these minerals exist at all these localities. And in fact, Schofield (1915) was quite clear when, in his description of the mines of the Cranbrook map-area, he wrote that “Pyromorphite was found ONLY [my emphasis] in the oxidized zone of the Society Girl mine, . . . .”
The second mineral in question is malachite. There is no mention of this mineral in any of the references I have been able to find for the North Star mine.
In my opinion, both pyromorphite and malachite must be removed from the listing for the North Star mine, and, incidentally, this reference of pyromorphite should be removed from the Mindat listing of this mineral for British Columbia.

Giles Peatfield comments on the rock types reported:
The host rocks were originally described by Schofield (1915) as quartzites. Recent work by Höy et al. (2000) has described them as argillite and siltstone.

Other Databases

Link to British Columbia Minfile:	082FNE053

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References