A gold-scheelite-cinnabar placer in Humboldt County, Nevada

Gold, scheelite, and cinnabar in amounts that might be profitably extracted are found in a placer deposit in the Dutch Flat mining district in north-central Nevada. These materials are the products of at least two and possibly three stages of metallogenic activity recorded in the district. The gold and perhaps most of the scheelite were derived from quartz veins that cut a small granodiorite stock and lower Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. Part of the scheelite may have been derived from contact-metamorphic deposits associated with the granodiorite stock. The cinnabar came from a shear zone that is later than the quartz veins. The proximity of the placer to the source of the minerals is the factor that made a significant concentration of these minerals possible. Incomplete sampling of the placer indicates an average value of $1.50 per cubic yard in combined gold, tungsten, and mercury based on the price of these metals in August 1954.