Placings in Oregon and California

The central valley of California is a simple zone of sinking flanked on the west of the Klamath Mountains and the Coast Ranges and to the west by the hills of Sierra Nevada. It extends from the San Joaquin River in the south through the valley of Sacramento, until it ends in the north by a layer of the volcanoes, Cascade de Mioseno-Plioseno. The units of rock on the Klamath Mountains and the Coast Ranges consist in a mix of Triadic ophilites, serpentines and basic Jurassic intrusive and below, the metasediments and vulcanite Cetaceans Franciscan, the skirts of Sierra Nevada are composed of ensembles of Triadic Ophilites (oceanic plaque) and serpentines and ultra basic Jurassic intrusive.

Both, the Klamath Mountains/Coast Ranges as the Skirts of Sierra Nevada has a history and a potential future in gold placing but only where they coincide with the cetacean plain- ranges. In the southwest of Oregon, these plain-ranges begin in the area of Riddle, they continue to the south until the northern riverbed of the Klamath River and from there they move towards the southeast direction through the districts of Weaverville-Hayfork. Projecting this tendency through the central valley until Sierra Nevada allows a correlation of materials and similar conditions in both sides of the valley. The descriptions of Diller refer to a peni-range in the upper Klamath and a peni-range in the lower Sherwood. In Riddle, Oregon, the horizontal fileon of superior mineral in an elevation of 3,500 feet and the lower part at 2,500 feet, can correspond to these designations.

From Riddle to the south, until the border with California, you can identify other residues of the Sherwood River, at about 2,500 feet of elevation in the Red Flat, the Eight Dollar Mountain, Free and Easy Woodcock Mountain and Rough and Ready Mountain. All these areas are prospects of nickel. Riddle is the setting of the only nickel mine in production of the United States which is exploited by the Hanna Mining Co. The recognition of the importance of the peniranging was produced for the first time at the beginnings of this century, and was discussed by Diller (1910), Hershey (1910) and Lindgren (1911).

In the south of Oregon, the Rogue River and their tributaries have been worked extensively with the intent of finding gold in placers, thus, as the rivers of Illinois and Waldo Jacksonville have been the areas of sewers, to the south of the Rouge River and the area to the south of Eight Dollar Mountain, near to Kirby. The Oregon State Geological Survey’s Bulletin 61, offers good historic and geological details about these districts. An association with an ultra basics complex is recommendable.