Within half a mile of the town, and on a lower spur or ridge that makes
down from the hills, is located the Embody Mine, which, during the
excitement at this locality in 1890, attracted considerable attention.
The gold-bearing material is quartzose, micaceous rock of somewhat
friable character. The deposit, as I may term it, has the appearance of
being an impregnation without definite form.
Were it not for the fact that the shoot of gold rock makes across the
strike of the schists, it would resemble some bedded deposits found at
the Homestake, Black Hills, South Dakota, where micaceous schists have
been silicified and hornblende schists metamorphosed to chloritic
schists, the whole carrying gold across a broad zone 1,600 feet in width
and 6,000 feet in length. The gold occurs in shoots or vein-like zones,
without defining lines of any character. At the Embody Mine, too, little
development has been done to make any positive prediction as to the
future of the mine. The formation strikes northeast and southwest, and
dips 70° southeast.
The country is somewhat broken up, but no considerable masses of
shattered rock were observed. The croppings are quite heavily stained
with iron oxides of brown and red shades, and this mineralization can be
traced some distance. Two shafts, one nearly 100 feet deep, the other
about 30 feet, have been sunk on the deposit, exposing rocks of uniform
character, all carrying some gold. The width of the gold-bearing zone is
undetermined, but it is thought to be from 6 to 20 feet.
As far as I learned, a “mill-run” had never been made on the rock from
this mine. Mining operations had been stopped and the property involved
in some sort of dispute. The value of the rock was given to me as $8 or
$10 per ton.