Engineer Gold Mine, Tagish Lake, Atlin Mining Division, British Columbia, Canadai

Regional Level Types
Engineer Gold Mine	Mine
Tagish Lake	Lake
Atlin Mining Division	Division
British Columbia	Province
Canada	Country

Though the deposit was discovered in 1899, the Engineer mine was only operated sporadically from 1907 to 1952, and then not again until the early 1990s. Well-crystallized “gold” is actually in the form of silver-dominant electrum—highly auriferous silver with gold contents ranging from 40 to 42 atomic percent. It is typically intimately associated with pyrrhotite and roscoelite in dendritic to leafy aggregates and in platy to wire-like crystals. This association is generally found as clasts and irregular nodules in the brecciated epithermal veins of the deposit. Leaf electrum (flat octahedra), to several centimeters, and more equant gold crystals —generally no more than 1 mm in size—also occur in calcite-filled quartz-crystal vugs (Mauthner et al. 2006).

In 1900, engineers surveying a "southern" route discovered gold-bearing quartz veins on the east shore of southern Tagish Lake; this soon became the Engineer mine. In the years that followed, several gold prospects were developed to a considerable degree, but the Engineer mine, with a recorded yield of over 560 000 grams of gold, remains the only significant producer in the immediate Tagish area.

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References