Cedar Creek Mine (William Tell), Ross, Westland District, West Coast Region, New Zealandi

Regional Level Types
Cedar Creek Mine (William Tell)	Mine
Ross	Town
Westland District	District
West Coast Region	Region
New Zealand	Country

The Cedar Creek gold mine is on the upper south-east slopes of Mount Greenland, bordering the southern side of Cedar Creek.

The lode was discovered by John Gagliardi in 1884. From 1885 to 1887, numerous claims were pegged along Cedar Creek, including Cedar Creek, Swiss Republic, All Nations, Larnach, and William Tell. Significant gold was only found at the William Tell mine, although modern sources label the site the Cedar Creek Mine.

Meanwhile a small town, containing a hotel, two stores, and several miner's huts was developed on the ridge above the creek. This was named Veronica after Gagliardi's daughter.

The William Tell Company installed a stamper battery in 1887. This lasted only until 1890, when the battery was sold and moved to the Minerva Mine near Blackball. This effectively ended mining at this time at Cedar Creek.

In 1896, the Alpha Syndicate bought the old claims, but abandoned them shortly thereafter. In 1913, the Greenland Gold and Quartz Company was formed and extended the William Tell No. 2 tunnel with good results. They installed a new stamp battery in 1917, but then the lode was lost when it hit a fault, and operations ceased in 1921.

The William Tell claim was taken up by W. Bierwirth in 1929, who located the lode beyond the fault, and by 1937 had achieved 1900 ounces of gold at 0.7 oz/t. In that year the Greenland Gold Ltd company purchased the lease for £20,000, based on an allegedly falsified report which overestimated the ore reserves. The company added another five heads to the battery plus cyanide tanks believing there were 25,000 tonnes of ore left. By 1941 a grand total of 41 tonnes of ore had been crushed, and the company was liquidated.

The United Mining Company explored the deposit in the 1970's, and constructed a hut, now used by hikers as an overnight stay. A four-wheel drive club restored the hut in 2013.

In theory a 13 kilometre 4 wheel drive track leaves Ross, and heads to the summit of Mount Greenland, then partially down the other side to the hiker's hut, near the Veronica site. The Coasters Club website reference below contains some seriously scary photographs of vehicles trying to negotiate the track. Expect shredded tyres, broken axles, and perhaps a car permanently abandoned on the side of the mountain. The track can be walked, is steep, requires a high level of fitness, and at least a one night stay at the hut. Only serious well prepared hikers should attempt the route.

Because of its isolation, there is still much to see. The hotel ruins, and miner's huts lined with gelignite and nitro glycerine boxes as walls, are cross country below the hiker's hut. The mines are further downhill by the creek, through thick forest, boulder strewn, requiring the negotiation of a slippery waterfall. Tunnels can be seen, still lined with tram tracks, and containing glow worms. Further downstream is the remains of the battery, with stampers, a pelton wheel, shaking tables, pulleys and belts, and a little further downstream the cyanide tanks.

The lode is found along the axis of the north-west trending William Tell Anticline, with the parallel Cedar Creek Syncline to the north-east, in the Greenland Group greywacke and argillite. The lode is vertical, and pitches steeply north or north-west. While the lodes can be traced for several kilometres, only economic mineralisation has been found between the William Tell No. 1 and 2 levels.

Ore minerals include pyrite, chalcopyrite, arsenopyrite, sphalerite, galena, boulangerite, bournonite, trace jamesonite, and tentatively identified tetrahedrite, all found in a quartz-calcite vein system, up to 4 metres wide. Gold is associated with the sulphides and sulphosalts. The mineralisation was emplaced when the Rangitoto Granite intruded into the previously folded Greenland Group sediments. These fluids migrated up along bedding planes, into the William Tell Anticline crest, then the William Tell Fault. The deposit is seen as fissure fillings associated with fault movement.

Around the old workings the bedding has a variety of dips, caused by small folds, which have developed between the Cedar Syncline, and William Tell Anticline. The normal William Tell Fault, dipping south-west 60-70 degrees, is marked in the workings as a friable black pug crush zone, containing numerous quartz stringers with pyrite, up to 1.5 metres wide, and forms the south wall of the worked vein system. Quartz at the site is massive crystalline milky white, with fractures in the quartz veins containing breccia quartz fragments up to 1 mm across cemented in very fine crushed quartz. Calcite is also found as fracture fillings in the quartz veins, as irregular, discontinuous veinlets several cms long, and a few mms wide.

Chalcopyrite is the most abundant sulphide mineral in the quartz veins, but still only amounts to a few percent by volume. This forms as anhedral aggregates up to a few mms in radius, often associated with the other sulphides and sulphosalts as fracture infilling in the quartz. Pyrite is pervasive, but not abundant, as euhedral, cubic, and pyritohedra crystals, often fractured, and associated with chalcopyrite. Arsenopyrite is found as euhedral and sub-euhedral crystals to 0.8 mms across, associated with pyrite and chalcopyrite, again as fracture infillings. Sphalerite is minor and associated with chalcopyrite blebs, and sometimes the sulphosalts. Galena is found in minute amounts, associated with the same minerals as sphalerite.

Jamesonite is found in minute amounts. Boulangerite occurs as epigranular un-orientated aggregates, and needles/fibres in quartz veins, with the sulphides, especially chalcopyrite. Bournonite forms irregular intergrowths with galena, and boulangerite. The tentatively identified tetrahedrite is found as aggregate crystals a few mms across, usually associated with gold and arsenopyrite in fractures fillings, with other sulphides and sulphosalts.

Gold occurs in sulphide and sulphosalt bearing quartz as fracture fillings, as irregular shaped grains, forming stringers up to 5 mms thick, and often associated with arsenopyrite. Gold may partially replace chalcopyrite, near boundaries with bournonite. Rounded gold inclusions up to 0.6 mms wide are found in bournonite and tetrahedrite, in pyrite enclosed with tetrahedrite, and to a lesser extent boulangerite. The gold is a dark yellow colour, and 95% pure.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References