Georgia Slide Mine (Beattie and Parsons Consonsolidated Mine; Beattie and Parsons Cons.; Beattie claim; Blue Rock claim; Mulvey Point claim; Pacific claim; Parsons claim), Georgetown, Georgetown District, East Segment Mother Lode, El Dorado County, California, USAi

Regional Level Types
Georgia Slide Mine (Beattie and Parsons Consonsolidated Mine; Beattie and Parsons Cons.; Beattie claim; Blue Rock claim; Mulvey Point claim; Pacific claim; Parsons claim)	Mine
Georgetown	Census-designated Place
Georgetown District	Mining District
East Segment Mother Lode	Lode
El Dorado County	County
California	State
USA	Country

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A former lode Au mine located in sec. 3, T12N, R10E, and in secs. 34 & 35, T13N, R10E, MDM, 2.2 km (1.4 miles) NNW of Georgetown, on the divide between Canyon Creek and Hudsons Gulch, on private land. Discovered in 1849. Operated during the period 1853 to 1895. Different claims active intermittently. MRDS database stated accuracy for this location is 100 meters.

The Georgia Slide Mine is located within the Georgetown District in northwestern El Dorado County. The district is located at the northeast end of the east branch of the Mother Lode belt, which extends from just north of Garden Valley north through Georgetown and the Georgia Slide area to the Middle Fork of the American River. The mine is noteworthy as the largest of the gold "seam deposits" in the Mother Lode having produced an estimated $6.5 million ($3 million from the Georgia Slide mines and $3.5 million from placer deposits in Oregon Canyon and Canyon Creek derived directly from the seam deposits). Unlike the typical Mother Lode gold quartz veins, the Georgia Slide deposits were largely worked by applying hydraulic mining methods to thin quartz stringers within a largely weathered country rock matrix 150-200 feet thick.

The Georgia Slide mine is the best known and largest seam gold mine in El Dorado County. Mining in the area began here in 1849 by a party of placer miners from Oregon. They established the local community of Growlersburg, whose name was soon changed to Georgetown. The small mining community of Georgia Slide soon appeared to the north on the south side of Canyon Creek. By the middle of 1850, Georgia Slide was a lively mining camp. When the easily recovered placer deposits were depleted, the lode deposits were exploited by tunneling. While technically a lode deposit in place, the Georgia Slide deposit was found at an early date to be best worked by hydraulic mining until more competent unweathered bedrock was reached. By 1853, tunneling was replaced by hydraulic mining, which would continue until it was banned in 1895. The method of working involved blasting the bank to break hard portions and hydraulicking to dig the soft ground and move broken material into sluices to wash the material. Whenever quartz specimens containing gold were found, they were hand sorted and crushed in a hand mortar (Preston, 1892). Larger blocks of gold-bearing quartz were treated in stamp mills.

The first mine to use hydraulic mining at Georgia Slide was the Beattie claim (36 acres) on the south side of Canyon Creek. By 1856, two other claims, the Blue Point (27 acres) and Pacific (6 acres) commenced hydraulic operations and later, these two claims along with the Mulvey Point and Parsons (20 acres) claims were consolidated with the Beattie to become the Georgia Slide Mine. The Beatty and Parsons claims were worked almost continuously from 1853 until 1895, when the use of a hydraulic mining on the claims was ordered stopped (Logan, 1926) the Blue Rock and Pacific claims were worked continuously from 1856-1895 (Logan, 1934).

After the cessation of hydraulic mining in 1895, small amounts of ore were treated in several small stamp mills. In 1915, a 10-stamp mill was being operated to determine the gold content of the large amount of accumulated tailings (the hydraulic process only recovered 40-60 percent of the gold). Some commercial mining of these claims would continue until 1916 or later. Subsequently, a number of lessees worked the quartz stringers in search of high grade pockets (Clark and Carlson, 1956).

In 1983, Callahan Mining Corp. and Nevada Resources, Inc. obtained a permit to conduct an exploration program at Georgia Slide. After spending $250,000 on the program, in 1988 Callahan Mining applied for a permit to open the Blue Rock Mine on the former Georgia Slide workings. The permit was not approved.

Mineralization is a vein deposit (Mineral occurrence model information: Model code: 273; USGS model code: 36a; Deposit model name: Low-sulfide Au-quartz vein; Mark3 model number: 27) hosted in esozoic-Paleozoic rocks of the Calaveras Complex (amphibolite, slate and schist). The ore body is lenticular, tabular, pinch-and-swell in form. It strikes N5W and dips 80E at a thickness of 10.67 meters, a width of 121.92 meters and a length of 1,219.2 meters. The vein is a seam Au deposit hosted in a lenticular body of highly weathered green, chloritic siliceous schist with some interbedded black slate. Stringers of quartz are 1 inch (2.5 cm) to 1 foot (0.3 meter), or more, in thickness, with an average of 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5.0 cm). There were 5 belts of schist where stringers were more abundant than elsewhere. The E belt is 35 feet thick. In addition, there were several wide quartz veins containing finely disseminated free gold and pyrite were encountered below the oxidized zone. The veins contained ore shoots with stoping lengths of up to 500 feet. The dimensions given are for the seam zone. Controls for ore emplacement included erratic ore shoots within fissure-filling mesothermal gold-quartz veins. Good crystalline Au is present. Ore materials included free-milling gold and auriferous pyrite. Gangue materials include quartz, calcite and albite. Local rocks include Jurassic marine rocks, unit 1 (Western Sierra Nevada and Western Klamath Mountains).

Regional geologic structures include the Melones Fault Zone.

Unlike the typical Mother Lode veins, the Georgia Slide seam deposits consist of narrow gold-bearing quartz veinlets within slate, schist and amphibolite country rock. The Georgia Slide deposit is essentially an immense lens shaped orebody roughly 4,000 feet long by 500 feet in maximum width and composed of auriferous quartz stringers ranging from one inch to over 1 foot wide within a matrix of highly weathered green chloritic schist and interbedded black slate of the Calaveras Complex (Moore, 1968). The overall orebody strikes N 5? W and dips 80? East (Logan, 1926). The Georgia Slide Mine occurs in an area where deep bedrock weathering of lode deposits caused the concentration of residual gold. Over time, extensive chemical weathering and mechanical breakdown of the softer intervening amphibolite and schist lithologies left the thin quartz veinlets and gold remaining. The deposits are loose and oxidized to depths of 100-150 feet. Jenkins (1935) referred to these deposits as "residual placer" deposits, but more commonly the term "seam deposits" has been applied. The seams are gold and auriferous pyrite-bearing quartz stringers and veinlets within the schist and slate ranging from less than 1 inch to a foot or more in thickness (Clark and Carlson (1956). Some stringers swelled into lenses several feet thick. The richest portions of seam deposits are, for the most part, near the intersections of two or more systems of veinlets, or where one system intersects a larger quartz veins (Logan, 1934). In some places, calcite and albite are abundant. There were 5 principle belts of schist and slate in which the stringers were more abundant than elsewhere. The easternmost belt was 35 feet thick (Clark and Carlson, 1956).

Workings include surface openings with an overall length of 304.8 meters and an overall width of 182.88 meters. This property was originally developed by hydraulicking from 1860 to 1895. An estimated 3.5 million cubic yards were removed from the pit. The hydraulicking operatyions left an open pit about 1,000 feet long by nearly 600 feet wide. Several small underground lode mining operations continued in the unweathered portions of the deposit, but no record of the workings are available. The quartz ore was processed in hand mortars and small stamp mills.

Production data are found in: Clark, W. B., and Carlson, D. W., (1956).

The Georgia Slide Mine is reported to have produced about $6.5 million from seam and placer deposits. Knopf (1929) estimated that the value of gold produced from the Georgia Slide seam deposits at $6.5 million ($3 million from the Georgia Slide mines and $3.5 million from placer deposits in Oregon Canyon and Canyon Creek derived from the seam deposits).

Analytical data results: Hydraulically mined material contained between $2-$3 (period values) Au/ton. Milling ore usually yielded 1/7 - 1/5 ounce Au/ton.

Mineral List

5 valid minerals.