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Pop's Gulch Jewelry Grade Nuggets, Mazourka Canyon [190340]

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / Gold Nuggets Start Price:2,000.00 USD Estimated At:4,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
Pop's Gulch Jewelry Grade Nuggets, Mazourka Canyon [190340]
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The "Nugget Ace" spent years detecting and finding gold nuggets is places no one ever imagined them to exist. In another lot in this collection sale, we discussed the possibility of gold nuggets sourced at or from the "gold zone" below Cerro Gordo. Erosion and erosional transport over geologic eons would have taken particulate gold down the steep drainages to the lower reaches of the various small canyons. Some miners call these canyons "gulches." Mazourka Canyon plays host to a myriad of geologic environments, much of which are older limestones. The limestones are cut from place to place by intrusions, which in turn can localize mineralized solutions ripe for reacting with limestone. The 1888 Report of the State Mineralogist report on Inyo County geology and mining prospects by Goodyear discusses this to a fair degree, albeit in 1888.
There are a number of mines in the hills above the mouth of Mazourka Canyon. My job (fh), nearly one hundred years later, was to walk those mountains as part of a wide-based exploration program, centered around a single mine submittal.
Goodyear discusses the two Owens River mining camps in some detail that were near the base of Mazourka Canyon. Back in the early 1980s, everything was long gone. But 100 years before, there were still more than a dozen buildings sitting deserted in the desert.
A few small mines and prospects dot the hillside in the lower reaches of the Inyo Mountains at Mazourka. There were copper, silver deposits. In fact, most of the small mines were silver mines.
As one climbs up through the mountains toward Cerro Gordo, a thick band of dark brown rocks "chalk-full" of prospects and underground working sticks out as an anomaly to any ore deposit geologist. Many called this the "gold zone," as the sampling of these clearly showed strong evidence of gold.
When you're a lode ore deposits geologist, you dont think much about the erosional debris from such deposits. Usually its the other way around - we do stream sediment sampling and go upstream until we find the lode.
The "Nugget Ace" penned the name "Pop's Gulch" because these small nuggets were covered in a bluish limestone, and "Pop" found them. The limestone dissolved easily and the result is jewelry grade clean, bright gold nuggets, generally from 1/8" to 1" long.
This group is one of two in the sale, and is 51.8 g, or 1.66 troy oz.
PS. I never met the "Nugget Ace" in the several years that I worked the Inyo Range. I sure did meet a lot of locals, though! I think he was hiding behind a boulder. [ Inyo Co. (Pop's Gulch) California