Myrtle mine, Memphis Creek, Slocan, Slocan Mining Division, British Columbia, Canadai

Regional Level Types
Myrtle mine	Mine
Memphis Creek	- not defined -
Slocan	- not defined -
Slocan Mining Division	Division
British Columbia	Province
Canada	Country

What was originally called the Alma mine, now known as the Myrtle property, is for the purposes of this posting called the Alma (Myrtle) mine. The mining area is located near the headwaters Memphis Creek, about 6.6 kilometres north-east of the village of Slocan, and 38 kilometres north of Nelson, British Columbia, in the Slocan Mining Division.

There is a brief description of the mine on the British Columbia “Minfile” site, current to 1997. Much of this is concerned with the history of the mine; a part that details the geological setting is quoted below:
“The country rock is porphyritic Nelson granite that is bleached and silicified adjacent to the vein. The vein is in a sheared and brecciated zone that strikes 040 degrees and dips 35 to 40 degrees southeast. A crosscut adit driven easterly at 107 degrees on the 100 level encountered 160 metres of this zone. A small pegmatite dike, a felsic dike and several shears are also exposed in this crosscut. On the 50 level, small lenticular masses of quartz and calcite with pods of sulphides occur within a 26-metre section of the main shear. Galena, sphalerite, some chalcopyrite and a minor amount of tetrahedrite and native silver (?) are the principal ore minerals.”
Giles Peatfield comments:
For more on this deposit, refer to Cairnes (1935), who incidentally did not query the existence of native silver.
The official British Columbia Government records production from the Myrtle property in 1907, 1935 and 1966. Total recorded production was 60 tonnes, yielding 2,425 ounces of silver, 539 kilograms of lead and 907 kilograms of zinc. However, these figures do not specify if these were from mine-head grades or mill recoveries or smelter returns. Working out precise production figures for the early days of mining in the Slocan Camp is an exercise in frustration – suffice it to say that the Alma (Myrtle) mine was a very small producer of silver, lead and zinc.

Comments on the Minerals Reported:
All the minerals listed were reported by Warren (1948). A specific point of interest is:
Owyheeite: This was reported by Warren (1948) as X-ray confirmed by Dr. R. M. Thompson at the University of Toronto. Warren described the specimen as “resembling tetrahedrite”. The Pacific Museum of Earth at the University of British Columbia has a specimen (#1961) labelled as owyheeite from the Alma Group, donated by the British Columbia Department of Mines – this may in fact be part of a collection from which Thompson obtained his X-ray pattern. See also Berry and Thompson, 1962.

Giles Peatfield
BASc. (Geological Engineering) University of British Columbia 1966.
PhD Queen's University at Kingston 1978.
Worked for Texas Gulf Sulphur / Texasgulf Inc. / Kidd Creek Mines - 1966 to 1985.
Vancouver based consultant 1982 to retirement in 2016

Other Databases

Link to British Columbia Minfile:	082FNW159

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References