Winona claims group, Sunlight Mining District, Park County, Wyoming, USAi

Regional Level Types
Winona claims group	Group of Claims
Sunlight Mining District	Mining District
Park County	County
Wyoming	State
USA	Country

Originally, the Winona group of claims consisted of a total of 31 lode claims. The claims were located between June 1901 and October 1910. Patents were issued on nine claims in October 1920 under the ownership of Union Metals Mining Corp., organized in 1920 in Lander, Wyo. These claims, constituting 175.47 acres (70.94 hectares), are Greenhorn, Uncle Frank, Malachite, Copper Queen, Copper King, Mohawk, Copperopolis, Granite Mountain, and Butte. They are now (1973) owned by Mr. Jerry W. Housel of Cody, Wyo.

The Greenhorn claim, located in August 1902, received most of the preliminary exploration. Sometime between 1902 and 1906, the Winona Gold-Copper Mining Co. of Wyoming was founded and a prospectus was issued. In June 1906, an adit was started on the Greenhorn claim to crosscut the vein and during the next five summers 1,135 feet (346 m) of workings were driven, including 350 feet (107 m) of drifting on an unnamed vein. Figure 15 shows the Greenhorn working at the time of patent application survey in 1911.

In its prospectus (circa 1906), the Winona Co. offered seven assays from as many different locales in the claim group, showing gold-silver-copper values ranging from $23.38 to $133.94 per ton. Sample widths or representative tonnages were not reported.

Parsons (1937) reported three assays from claims within the Winona group. He stated that the assays "indicate a relative order of magnitude but the figures are not accurate enough for commercial use." No representative measurements were given with the assays. Parsons' assay of "ore found on the dump" at the Winona mine ran 0.58 ounce gold and 0.88 ounce silver per ton (19.89 ppm gold and 30.18 ppm silver). His assay for an ore sample taken from a dump on the Copper King claim ran 0.04 ounce gold and 0.62 ounce silver per ton (1.37 ppm gold and 21.27 ppm silver) and 3.35 percent copper. His assay for an ore specimen taken from a vein outcrop on the Butte claim ran 0.22 ounce gold and 3.14 ounces silver per ton (7.55 ppm gold and 107.70 ppm silver) and 4.43 percent copper.

East (1911) stated that the Bluff vein of the Winona Gold-Copper Mining Co. was "30 feet wide in andesitic breccia with the sulphides of copper occurring in large bunches with smaller particles disseminated through the entire vein." He also stated that the 750-foot (230-m)-long Winona tunnel cut a 2-foot (0.6-m)-wide vein at 630 feet (195 m) from the portal which had "well defined walls with the sulphides of copper occuring in lens-shaped masses." The 150-foot (46-m) drift reported by East to be on this vein was later found to be 350 feet (122 m), as reported in the land surveyor's 1911 notes.

When the Winona group was examined in mid-1970 only one working was open, a 315-foot (96-m) adit bearing N. 30° W. on the Copper King patent (fig. 16). Others were caved at their portals. Sample BCM407 (table 3) was chipped across a 4.2-foot (1-m)-wide shear zone at the face of the Copper King adit. A second sample (BCM408) was chipped across the 5-foot (1.6-m) back of the drift at a point 185 feet (52.5 m) in from the portal.

Sample BCM406 (table 3, fig. 15) was grabbed from the dump at the main Winona adit (Greenhorn claim) on a 20-foot (6.2-m) grid. Determined on an assumption of the 6- by 7 -foot (1.8- by 2.1-m) cross section reported in the 1911 survey, an in-place tonnage factor of 12.5 cubic feet per ton, and a probability that no tonnage was shipped, the Winona dump would originally have contained about 4,000 tons (3,628 t).

Ten prospect-pit dumps were sampled on other claims of the original Winona group. These test pits lie in the upper Sulphur Creek drainage in a cirque just south of a pass leading to the Copper Lakes (pl. 2). Assay data (table 3) showed: gold, 0.005 to 0.03 ounce per ton (0.17 -1.03 ppm); silver, trace to 1.18 ounces per ton (trace to 40.47 ppm); copper, as much as 0.30 percent; lead, as much as 1.4 percent; and zinc, less than 0.1 percent. All samples taken were grabbed from the dumps on 4- or 5-foot (1.4- or 1.5-m) centers (samples BCM409-BCM411, BCM421, BCM422, BCM424-BCM427, and BCM433, table 3).

A caved adit about a fourth of a mile (0.4 km) west of the old Winona adit was sampled at its portal. A 2.4-foot (0. 74-m) chip sample (BCM412, table 3) was collected across a vertical syenite dike above the portal. A second chip sample was collected (BCM413, table 3) across a 1.1-foot (0.34- m) shear zone of the dike.