Silver Island Mountain Mining Area

[ExpUt]

Spent a couple of gorgeous days exploring and documenting the mines of the Silver Island Mountains with Corey & Jess (GoldRushExpedition.com) and a couple of other ExpeditionUtah members. We had the entire mountain range to ourselves, literally not a sole in site We visited a handful of mine and cave sites, several of which took some serious hiking.

I visited several of these mines last June on a similar trip to the range, following that I did some brief online searching and didn't come up with much info. I've been playing around for the last few minutes on Google and I'm coming up with the same void. There are likely 50+ openings in the range, several semi-permanent cabins (ruins) and some obvious "tent city" sites so I would imagine there is some better info out there. Was it called a different name? Anyone have any info on the area?

[rhartill]

Silver Island Mtns in Box Elder County?

B115 from the UGS (Geology Mineral Resources of Box Elder County) has some info on the Silver Island Mtns Mining District, also known as CRATER LAKE Mining District...

the scanned text is as follows: Crater Island Mining District
The Crater Island mining district (figure 36) is
located III the southwest part of Box Elder County at
the nurthern end of the Silver Island Mountains about
12 miles suutheast of the Lucin mining district. It is
ahout 25 miles northeast of Wendover. Utah, the nearest
tllwn and paved road. Crater Island is a mountainous
mass approximatel:: six miles long north-south and
4 miles \vide cast-west. It is separated from the major
part uf the range by a narrow neck or bar of gravel called
the Donner-Reed Pass. Otherwise this mountain would
be a true island surrounded by the mud-nat "sea" of the
Great Salt Lake Desert
Claiming of the miner~!l occurrences commenced
about 1873 but no production was reported until 1908.
In earlier years the district was regarded as an area of the
larger Silver Island mining district (l1111stly in Tooele
County), but the term Crater Island district began tD be
used after 1901. It is impossible to separate thc value of
the Box Elder County portion of the district as records
were generally combined. The Silver Island district was
important for silver. lead, copper, ~ll1d a slllall amount of
gold.
Butler (1920) reports that from 1908 to 1913 the
Silver Island mining district produced metals valued at
S90)19, but Anderson (1960, p. 159) thinks that
almost all production was from the Carrie Mack mine in
Tooele County. Bureau of Mines' Mineral Yearbooks
show that the Crater Island mining district was active
betwecn 1934 and 1948, whell 94 Ollnces of gold, 1,194
ounces of silver, 23,666 pounds of copper and 91
pounds of lead were produced and valued at S7,854.
Recently, tungsten deposits were discovered on Crater
Island: there was no production through 1974, but
development work was being carried out.
Geologically, Crater Island is a mass 0 f Paleozoic
rock. badly broken by north-south trending faults and
intruded by granitic rock (quart! monzonite and granodiorite)
(figure 37). The largest outcrop of igneolls
rock, the Crater Island stock, is at the south end of the


island. Some smaller intrusive outcrops occur at
Desolate Point to the southeast. and two outcrops,
the North and Sheepwagon stocks, each olle mik by l.~
mile, are found to the northeast. The Paleol.llic rocks are
dominated by carbonates.
The mines and prospects of Crater Island are
mostly scattered on the east side of the mountain mass.
AnJerson (1960, p. 160) notes that the mineralization is
limited to ( I) portions of the tactite zones between the
granitic and Paleozoic rocks, (2) quartz and calcite veins,
and (3) slight random occurrences in the highly jointed
Swan Peak Quartzite. Some LlUlts show local ironstaining
and alteration. Mincralization has been noted in
Ordovician, Cambrian, and Permian rock and to a slight
extent in the granitic rocks.

The reference to Anderson, 1960 (sic) is as follows:

Anderson, W. L., 1957, Geology of the northern Silver Island
Mountains, Box Elder and Tooele Counties, Utah: University
of Utah M. S. thesis.
At the U of U Library:
Collection: ML: ARC available by request
Call No.: QE3.5 1957 .A5

[Derek]

Isn't most of the that mountain now a wilderness lock down err I mean study area? If so I'm sure that this further complicates travel to the mine locations.

[ExpUt]

Isn't most of the that mountain now a wilderness lock down err I mean study area? If so I'm sure that this further complicates travel to the mine locations.

Thankfully its not. Several of the other major ranges in the area have been absorbed into Wilderness, the Cedar Range, Deep Creeks, etc. This range has been inventoried and proposed for Wilderness, but fingers crossed it doesn't happen. Regardless, most of the mines are fully accessible from the current road, there are a couple of faint roads we traveled to mine sites but the majority of the sites in the range require hiking.