Bughole exploration prospect, Baraga County, Michigan, USAi

Regional Level Types
Bughole exploration prospect	Prospect (Abandoned)
Baraga County	County
Michigan	State
USA	Country

Commodities (Major) - Vanadium
Deposit Type: Vein
Development Status: Prospect

In 1888, John B. Belanger found a mineralized vein on the SW ¼ of Section 36, T52N-R30W, near the east branch of the Huron River. Belanger traced the 15-foot vein 100 feet on the surface and claimed that an assay of the rock showed $5 in gold, $10 in silver, and $10 in zinc per ton. Belanger never succeeded in opening a mine on the vein, but some time later the landowner, Christopher Ching, sold the parcel to John Thompson of Chicago as “valuable mineral land.”
In 1914, Thompson was prospecting for manganese on his property and sent samples to Chicago for testing. Late in the year, the report came to him that some of the samples contained economic quantities of vanadium as well as a small percentage of uranium. Thompson put a crew to work at the prospect, and by the end of the year, the men had sunk an 18-foot shaft, which Thompson’s associate, George W. McGhee, named the Bughole Mine. McGhee wrote a glowing report on the mine, which was published in Mining and Engineering World on December 12, 1914. The article prompted R.C. Allen, the Michigan commissioner of mines and mineral statistics, to assign Professor W.E. Hopper of the Michigan College of Mines in Houghton to investigate the prospect. Hopper visited the site and took samples, but found the vein to contain nothing more than galena and small amounts of pyrite and chalcopyrite. The mine apparently closed down soon afterward.

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References