Beauce Placer Project

History

The Beauce Placer property was the site of Canada's first gold rush in the 1850's, years before the Klondike gold rush. Two of Canadada's largest gold nuggets, the Kilgour nugget at 52 ounces and the McDonald nugget at 45 ounces, came from the Gilbert River, which flows through the property.

In the early 1960's, the property was the site of a major placer gold mining operation. The Beauce Placer Company was the only commercial placer gold mining operation in eastern North America. The placers where mined with a floating Yuba dredge. The Company mined 56,000 oz of gold from an area representing less than 20% of the placer channel near St-Gustave road.

Gold production stopped in 1962 due to two major problems. First, they underestimated the depth of the overburden due to a westward dip of the bedrock. Therefore, the bucket-lined dredge of the Yuba dredge could no longer reach the auriferous pay zone. After modify the dredge by extending the bucket-lined boom, production-changed location to mine from west to east. Secondly, the Yuba dredge was designed to mine placer gold from sand and gravel. The pay zone in the western part of the channel consisted of clay (auriferous basil till). The dredge wasn't equipment to separate gold from clay.

Uragold work & discoveries

• Sonic Drilling during 2011 reveals that the gold bearing unit correspond to a brown clayey diamict of glacial origin, rather than an alluvial gravel;
• The auriferous layer of the Chaussegros Range remains open laterally beyond the known placer channel;
• In 1960, Beauce Placer dredged less than 20% of the placer channel and produced 56,000;
• Characteristics of the gold grains extracted from this unit suggest a close proximity to a bedrock source;
• Diamond drilling carried out in the fall of 2011 cored sediments and volcanics of the Beauceville Formation under and immediately up ice from the known placer;
• Core descriptions revealed intense quartz carbonate veining, local sulphide mineralization accompanied by silicification, epidotization, quartz veining lixiviation and brecciation;
• In 2012, Genivar completed environmental audit and the permitting application for a bulk sampling;
• A large bulk sample is clearly required to better evaluate the size distribution and concentration of gold in the buried auriferous unit characterized by the dominance of coarse nugget on the Beauce Placer Property.

Objective

Uragold's objectives are to evaluate the size and the economic potential of the historical placer gold deposit for a potential gold recovery operation while exploring for a bedrock source of gold.

800 ton, four stories high Yuba dredge, Beauce 1962

Grains of gold from hole G65-04

Sonic drilling through
multipleglacial units,
down to the bedrock

Excavator preparing property
for sampling(foreground)
Remnants of Yuba dredge

Nuggets mined by Beauce Placer Co., Seber, 1961

Maps of drill locations, overburden profile and gold grades - Source: Quebec Minertry of Natural Resources
Report: GM42988 (pre-NI43-101) - University of Laval for Coniagas Mines Ltd, 1986 [Download]