Gold anomaly in soil of the West End Creek area, Yellow Pine District, Valley County, Idaho

A gold anomaly recently found by soil sampling near the Yellow Pine mine is accompanied by a silver anomaly and by conspicuous though minor mercury, antimony, arsenic, and tungsten anomalies. The anomalies are not completely delimited by the sampling, but preliminary results indicate that a gold anomaly extends 600 feet along one fault and 500 feet along a fault that intersects it. The gold content of 128 soil samples ranges from less than 0.05 ppm (part per million) to 8.0 ppm; the median value is 0.70 ppm. Within the area in which gold in the soil samples is equal to or greater than 1 ppm, 23 samples have as the mean 2.91 ppm, equivalent to 0.085 troy ounce of gold per ton. The gold anomaly in soil helps define an attractive exploration target for low-grade gold ore in this area, which overlaps that of the West End Creek gold prospects described by J. R. Cooper in 1951 in U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 969-F (p. 151-197).