The Economic Aspect of Geology

by C. K. Leith

Gold deposits are of two general classes—placers, and veins or lodes.

Placers, which are in general the more easily discovered and more easily worked deposits, have in the past been the chief source of the world's gold supply. It is estimated that in the first twenty-seven years of the modern era of gold-mining, beginning with the discovery of gold in California in 1848, 87 per cent of the world's production was obtained from placers. At present the placers of recent geologic age supply a tenth to a fifth of the gold, and ancient or fossil placers in the Transvaal supply another two-fifths. In the United States about a fourth of the gold production comes from placers, mainly from California and Alaska.

Placers are detrital or fragmental sediments containing the ore in mechanical fragments, which are derived from the erosion and transportation of solid-rock veins or lodes, sometimes called the "mother lode." During the process of transportation and deposition there is more or less sorting, because of differing density of the mineral fragments, resulting in the segregation or concentration of the ore minerals in certain layers or channels. Gold, because of its weight, tends to work down toward bedrock, or into scoured or excavated portions of stream channels. In a few cases it is carried in some quantity to the sea and concentrated in beach sands. The processes are not unlike the mechanical concentration of ores by crushing and water sorting. Seldom, however, do the processes go far enough in nature to produce an ore which can be used directly without some further mechanical sorting. Ore minerals concentrated in placers are those which resist abrasion and chemical solution during the processes of weathering and transportation, and which have a density sufficiently high so that they are partially sorted out and concentrated from the accompanying quartz and other minerals. To warrant their recovery they must also be of such high intrinsic value that it pays to mine small quantities. The most important of such minerals are gold, tin, platinum, and the precious stones. Iron, copper, lead, and zinc minerals are often somewhat concentrated as placers, but their intrinsic value is not high enough to warrant the attempt to recover them in the large amounts necessary to make them commercially available.

Placers are forming now and have formed at all stages of the earth's history. Early placers may be reworked and further concentrated by renewal of the proper erosional and transportational conditions. Old placers may be buried beneath younger rocks, cemented, and more or less recrystallized. "Fossil" placers of this kind are best represented by deposits in the Black Hills of South Dakota and probably by the South African gold deposits.

In the Witwatersrand deposits of South Africa, the gold is concentrated in the lower parts of large conglomerate and quartz sand layers of great areal extent. Pebbles of the conglomerate are mainly quartz and quartzite. The gold, in particles hardly visible to the eye, is in a sandy matrix and is associated with chloritoid, sericite, calcite, graphite, and other minerals. The origin of the gold deposits of this district is not entirely agreed on, but the evidence seems on the whole to favor their placer origin. Some investigators of these ores believe them to have been introduced into the conglomerate and sand by later solutions, possibly by hot solutions related to certain diabase intrusions that cut the beds.

In the vein or lode or hard-rock deposits, the gold is mainly metallic gold, and to a minor extent is in the form of gold tellurides. It is usually closely associated with iron pyrite in a matrix or gangue of quartz. Seldom is a gold deposit free from important values in other minerals. About 84 per cent of the gold mined in vein or lode deposits of the United States is associated with silver minerals, the combined value averaging about $6 per ton; about 13 per cent comes from copper ores which have an average yield of gold and silver of 50c. per ton; and 3 per cent comes from zinc and lead ores, with an average gold and silver yield ranging from $1 to $6 per ton. The geologic occurrence of gold in the copper, lead, and zinc ores has already been referred to in the discussions of these ores.

Reference will be made here only to the vein deposits in which gold, with silver, constitutes the principal values. Because of their common gangue of quartz these are often called "dry" or "siliceous" ores. Their principal occurrence is in distinct fissure veins in igneous rocks, with more or less replacement of the wall rock. The igneous rocks are commonly acid intrusives of a granite or porphyry type, less commonly intrusives of gabbro and diabase and surface lavas of rhyolite and basalt. In a few cases the ores are contact-metamorphic deposits of the type described under copper ores. In still rarer cases they are in pegmatites. Gold is commonly associated with minerals and wall-rock alterations indicating deposition by hot solutions, which are inferred to have come from the igneous rocks.

Because of the resistant nature both of ore minerals and gangue, weathering and secondary concentration have had little effect in enriching gold deposits. So far as there has been any noticeable effect on the gold content of the ores, it has been due to the leaching out of other constituents, principally pyrite and other sulphides, leaving the gold present in slightly larger proportions. Locally there is evidence of solution of gold in weathered zones and its deposition in the sulphide zones below. Solution is believed to be accomplished by chloride solutions, and is favored by the presence of manganese which delays precipitation. The precipitating agent below may be ferrous sulphate, various sulphides, native metals, or organic matter.

Of the vein or lode gold ores in the United States some of the most productive and best known have the following geologic features:

The California gold belt extends north and south along the west slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The ore is in a series of parallel and overlapping veins striking with the trend of the range, associated with granodiorite intrusives in schist and slate. There is no pronounced secondary concentration. These deposits are the source of most of the great placer deposits of California, hence the name "Mother Lode" applied to a part of them. The principal ore deposits are somewhat removed from the main mass of intrusive which forms the crest of the Sierra Nevada range, and are more closely related to the smaller similar intrusive masses farther down the slope. The gangue is mainly quartz.