Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/759903
44 www.resourceworld.com D E C E M B E R / J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 7 F ollowing an initial placer gold rush in the 1870s in the Black Hills of south- western South Dakota, a number of important hard rock gold discoveries were made in the region, including the famed 40 million ounce Homestake Mine, the rich- est and deepest gold mine in the world – 152 million tonnes grading 8.4 g/t gold. In production between 1878 and 2002, the Homestake Mine never ran out of ore; it closed due to low gold prices. Indeed, gold mineralization remained open below the deepest 8500-foot level What attracted Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. [MMV-TSXV] to the Black Hills was the realization that the 70-km long Homestake Gold Belt, which hosts the largest gold-hosted iron formation deposit in the world, had not been well explored using modern exploration methods and was wide open for staking. Mineral Mountain's Rochford Project includes at least 12 historic small, high-grade pro- ducers, including the down-plunge south extension of the Cochrane deposit which hosts a non-NI 43-101 compliant inferred resource of 268,000 ounces grading 6.34 g/t gold. In an interview, Nelson Baker, President and CEO, told Resource World, "We found that the Rochford district, which is only 26 km south of the Homestake Mine and in the same geological belt, has very similar geology to the Homestake mine horizon. [Horizon means the mineralizing event at Homestake occurred around the same time as the Rochford mineralization. The Rochford district has not been a focus for exploration companies and, since 1997, no serious exploration was conducted in the area. Almost the entire favourable, gold- bearing host rocks were open for staking." Since 2013, Mineral Mountain has been expanding its land position in the Rochford gold district by both purchas- ing and staking mineral claims with old recorded gold occurrences associated with the iron formation along that trend. "Subsequently, after we staked an ini- tial block of 289 claims, we decided to conduct a very high resolution helicopter borne survey which is something that has never been done in the belt," said Baker. "We wanted to look at the Rochford region as a district-scale project area. Finally, we acquired the missing puzzle piece to the whole data base assembly when we acquired proprietary data generated by Homestake between 1967 and 1988 for the Standby Mine. The data supported our data base interpretation that there was definitely a large-scale gold horizon occur- ring on the Standby Mine patents which needed to be drilled in detail." Gold ore in the region is mainly hosted in a grunerite-siderite-chert-pyrrhotite iron formation in what are known as ledges, although one – the Wharf Mine – has porphyry style mineralization. Mineral Mountain, which now has largest land package in the Rochford dis- trict at 7,516 acres, has recognized three prominent gold trends: the Standby Mine-Bloody Gulch-Lookout Mine Gold Trend – 5.5 km long. The second trend is the Cochrane Mine Trend about 3 km long and parallel to the Standby Mine- Bloody-Gulch-Lookout Mine Trend. The TSX: MOZ Contact: Christopher Haldane, Investor Relations Telephone: 416.987.0714 Website: www.marathon-gold.com Newfoundland's Next Gold Camp: 1.3 million oz. and growing Mineral Mountain seeking Homestake look-alike in Black Hills by Ellsworth Dickson miNiN g