Golden Dawn Minerals has acquired from Mineworks Ventures a 130 tonne-per-day permitted processing facility and adjacent tailings pond located on the Boundary Falls property in British Columbia, Canada.
Golden Dawn believes that mines on this and adjacent properties, collectively called the Greenwood Precious Metal Project currently held under an option agreement with Mineworks, have potential for further development.
The historic May Mac Mine is host to a multitude of quartz veins carrying gold, silver and base metals. Although in excess of ten veins have been located to date, almost all historic development has been restricted to just two principal veins. Underground mining has been conducted intermittently since 1894 on the two vein systems, but the property has been inactive since the mid-1980s.
Golden Dawn believes that previous exploration and mining activities were chronically under-funded, and many areas of obvious potential have not been followed up.
Consequently, a budget of $650,000 has been allocated as a Phase I underground exploration program, to include mine rehabilitation, underground mapping, sampling and underground drilling to give an indication of the property's potential to host a small narrow vein mining operation.
The company also proposes a budget of $150,000 to rehabilitate the Wild Rose adit and conduct limited underground drilling and exploration at the conclusion of the Phase 1 underground exploration work at the May Mac Mine. The program at the Wild Rose Mine is expected be completed by the end of November 2012.
By the end of this year, for a budget of approximately $800,000, the company will have sufficient exploration data and permits in hand to determine if the collection of a bulk sample of 10,000 tonnes at either the historic May Mac and/or the Wild Rose mines is warranted and is feasible.
In addition, insight will be gained into the feasibility of the rehabilitation of the existing permitted processing plant and tailings pond. If bulk sampling is warranted at one or both historic mines, the intent will be to proceed to bulk sampling to evaluate if sufficient ore with economic grades is contained in either vein system in order to commence underground narrow vein mining.
There are currently no known mineral reserves or resources at the historic May Mac or Wild Rose Mines.
