La India district, León Department, Nicaraguai

Regional Level Types
La India district	Mining District
León Department	Department
Nicaragua	Country

Gold and silver have been mined in the La India district in western Nicaragua for well over 100 years. The first known gold mining in the La India district was by the London-based Corduroy Syndicate who worked a small-scale underground mining operation exploiting the Dos Hermanos vein in the southwestern corner of the mining area in the late 19th or early 20th Century. Industrial-scale underground gold mining was initiated in 1936 on the nearby India vein which Canadian mining company Noranda Inc. acquired in 1938. Noranda expanded underground mining operations and by the time the mine closed in 1956, the La India vein had been worked along a 1200 m strike length to a depth of over 250 m below surface at the deepest part, the neighbouring America-Constancia vein along a 2200 m strike length up to 140 m below the valley floor, and six other smaller underground mine workings had been initiated on satellite veins spread over approximately a 50 km² area. Available records show annual production peaked at 41,891 oz gold and 39,282 oz silver in 1953. Since the closure of the La India gold mine and continuing to the present day, artisanal miners have intermittently worked the most accessible upper levels of the mine and extracted ore from small underground workings throughout the district.

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