Textural and structural evidence for a predeformation hydrothermal origin of the Tungsten Queen Deposit, Hamme District, North Carolina

The Hamme tungsten district is composed of a series of steeply dipping quartz-wolframite veins in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Veins are concentrated near the border of the lower Paleozoic Vance County pluton, along its western contact with green-schist-facies metapelites and metavolcanic rocks of the Carolina slate belt. One of these quartz veins, the Snead-Walker, hosts the Tungsten Queen deposit. The vein is 0 to 10 m thick and trends N 35 degrees E for approximately 3,500 m through slate belt rocks and the granitic pluton. The deposit has been worked to a depth of nearly 520 m and contains eight en echelon ore lodes that plunge 42 degrees to 65 degrees between S 10 degrees E and S 10 degrees W. Ore lodes commonly are encased in thin lenses of quartz-sericite greisen. The principal ore mineral is huebnerite and is accompanied by scattered occurrences of pyrite, sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite, and tetrahedrite. The gangue is predominantly quartz with minor amounts of fluorite, sericite, and carbonate.Studies of minor structures and mineral textures indicate that both the wall rock and the ore and gangue minerals within the vein have been deformed by at least two events. The first event produced relatively gentle, open, and shallow-plunging folds; later, an intense episode of right-lateral shearing developed steeply plunging, tight folds and numerous northeast-trending shears. This latter deformation also developed a prominent alignment of ore and gangue minerals oblique to the vein walls and may have formed the en echelon distribution of ore lodes.In relatively undeformed parts of the vein, clusters of euhedral huebnerite crystals are oriented perpendicular to vein layering. Some prismatic crystals have terminations with cappings of sulfides and in polished thin section show concentric growth zones. These features are similar to textures found in unmetamorphosed tungsten-bearing hydrothermal vein deposits such as those at Pasto Bueno, Peru; Carrock Fell, England; and Panasqueria, Portugal. The relationships of mineral textures and minor structures indicate that the Tungsten Queen deposit formed by open-space fillings of linear faults or fractures and was subsequently deformed by at least two episodes of folding and shearing.