The Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine, formerly and historically the Cresson Mine, is an active

gold mine Gold Mine may refer to: *Gold Mine (board game) *Gold Mine (Long Beach), an arena *"Gold Mine", a song by Joyner Lucas from the 2020 album '' ADHD'' See also * ''Gold'' (1974 film), based on the novel ''Gold Mine'' by Wilbur Smith *Gold mining ...

located near the town of

Victor The name Victor or Viktor may refer to: * Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname Arts and entertainment Film * ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film * ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...

, in the Cripple Creek mining district in the US state of

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

. The richest gold mine in Colorado history, it is the only remaining significant producer of gold in the state, and produced 322,000

troy ounces Troy weight is a system of units of mass that originated in 15th-century England, and is primarily used in the precious metals industry. The troy weight units are the grain, the pennyweight (24 grains), the troy ounce (20 pennyweights), and the ...

of gold in 2019, and reported 3.45 million troy ounces of Proven and Probable Reserves as at December 31, 2019. It was owned and operated by

AngloGold Ashanti AngloGold Ashanti Limited is a global gold mining company. It was formed in 2004 by the merger of AngloGold and the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation. It is now a global gold producer with 21 operations on four continents. The company is listed ...

through its subsidiary, the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company (CC&V), until 2015, when it sold the mine to

Newmont Mining Corporation Newmont Corporation is a gold mining company based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, United States. It is the world's largest gold mining corporation. Incorporated in 1921, it owns gold mines in Nevada, Colorado, Ontario, Quebec, Mexico, the Domin ...

.
Newmont completes purchase of Cripple Creek & Victor gold mine, accessed: 9 August 2015About CC&V
Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company website, accessed: 5 July 2010 The mine is an Open-pit mining, open pit operation. The gold is recovered from the ore by

heap leaching Heap leaching is an industrial mining process used to extract precious metals, copper, uranium, and other compounds from ore using a series of chemical reactions that absorb specific minerals and re-separate them after their division from other e ...

. CC&V's heap leach pad is one of the biggest in the world. The mine has a visitor center with displays about modern mining procedures, historical photos, ore and core samples, and mineral uses. Visitors can tour the mine with advance reservation through the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum in

Victor, Colorado The City of Victor is a Statutory City in Teller County, Colorado, United States. Gold was discovered in Victor in the late 19th century, an omen of the future of the town. With Cripple Creek, the mining district became the second largest gold ...

Geology

The ore is in altered and

breccia Breccia () is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language, in which it means "rubble". A breccia may have a variety of di ...

ted

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

and volcanoclastic rocks of

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...

age and predominantly

quartz latite A quartz latite is a volcanic rock or fine grained extrusive rock composed mostly of alkali feldspar and plagioclase with some quartz. It forms from the rapid cooling of magma of intermediate composition but moderately enriched in alkali metal ox ...

composition. The Cripple Creek volcanic complex is surrounded by

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the ...

gneiss Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures an ...

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

, and

quartz monzonite Quartz monzonite is an intrusive, felsic, igneous rock that has an approximately equal proportion of orthoclase and plagioclase feldspars. It is typically a light colored phaneritic (coarse-grained) to porphyritic granitic rock. The plagioclase ...

. The gold occurs as disseminated micrometre-size free gold and as gold-silver tellurides, or

telluride mineral A telluride mineral is a mineral that has the telluride anion as a main component. Tellurides are similar to sulfides and are grouped with them in both the Dana and Strunz mineral classification systems.http://webmineral.com/strunz/II.shtml Webm ...

Gangue In mining, gangue () is the commercially worthless material that surrounds, or is closely mixed with, a wanted mineral in an ore deposit. It is thus distinct from overburden, which is the waste rock or materials overlying an ore or mineral body t ...

minerals include

pyrite The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Iron, FeSulfur, S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic Luster (mineralogy), lust ...

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

, and

fluorite Fluorite (also called fluorspar) is the mineral form of calcium fluoride, CaF2. It belongs to the halide minerals. It crystallizes in isometric cubic habit, although octahedral and more complex isometric forms are not uncommon. The Mohs sca ...

History

Gold mining in the district began in the 1890s, mostly as underground operations, chasing high grade veins. Over 23 million ounces of gold have been recovered from the district since 1890. At 2012 prices ($1600 per troy ounce ), this would be worth around US$37 billion. Warren, Harry & Frank Woods entered the Victor mining scene in when they purchased the Mount Rosa Placer and incorporated the Mt. Rosa Mining, Milling and Land Company on January 9, 1892. This would later become known as the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine. Most of the Cripple Creek properties were consolidated into the Golden Cycle Mining and Reduction Company, and the Carlton Tunnel was completed in 1941. This 6.5 mile long tunnel drained the district down to 3,000 feet. The roasting-cyanidation Carlton Mill opened in March 1951. This mill also tested the first carbon adsorption-desorption process. The

Cripple Creek and Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad The Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad (CC&VNG RR) is a narrow-gauge heritage railroad that operates seasonal tourist trains between Cripple Creek and the city's outskirts to the south. The railroad uses a revitalized section of the o ...

was opened in 1967 and continues to serve as a tourist attraction. The current open cut operation dates back to 1995. The operation became part of AngloGold in March 1999, when the company acquired the ''Independence Mining Company'' and thereby 66% of the mine. AngloGold merged with junior partner ''Golden Cycle Gold Corporation'' in 2008 and thereby acquired the remaining 33% of the project.United States 2008
AngloGold Ashanti country report, accessed: 5 July 2010US gold operation’s life-of-mine extended
miningweekly.com, published: 2 December 2002, accessed: 6 July 2010 The mine is a low-cost, low-yield open pit operation, with grades well below one gram of gold per tonne of ore. In recent years, 2008 and 2009, the mine accounted for 5% of AngloGold Ashanti's worldwide production. It is the company's only active operation in the United States. In 2008, the State of Colorado and Teller County granted the mine a mine-life extension.
AngloGold Ashanti website, accessed: 11 July 2010 Production and grade of the mine have steadily declined over the last few years, while the total production costs have risen from US$372 an ounce in 2007 to US$475 in 2009. The mine employed 562 people in 2009, of which 367 were permanent employees. In August 2015, the mine was sold to

Cresson Vug

On 24 November 1914, Dick Roelofs was supervising the exploration of the mine to the 1300 level, when a large gold-filled

vug A vug, vugh, or vugg ( ) is a small- to medium-sized cavity inside rock. It may be formed through a variety of processes. Most commonly, cracks and fissures opened by tectonic activity (folding and faulting) are partially filled by quartz, cal ...

was blasted open on the 1200 level. The next day, Roelof, a mine owner and an attorney explored the "cave of sparkling jewels". The vug measured 14 feet wide, 23 feet long, 36 feet high, which took a month to empty, and yielded 60,000

of gold.Voynick, S.M., 1992, Colorado Gold, Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Company, Two "Aladdin's caves of gold" were discovered in August 1953, on the 3100 foot level of Ajax Mine, Battle Mountain.

Sylvanite Sylvanite or silver gold telluride, chemical formula , is the most common telluride of gold. Properties The gold:silver ratio varies from 3:1 to 1:1. It is a metallic mineral with a color that ranges from a steely gray to almost white. It is c ...

and

Calaverite Calaverite, or gold telluride, is an uncommon telluride of gold, a metallic mineral with the chemical formula AuTe2, with approximately 3% of the gold replaced by silver. It was first discovered in Calaveras County, California in 1861, and was ...

covered the walls. Mine superintendent M.H. Grice stated, "It is a sight a mining man may see but once in a lifetime..."

Production

Past production figures since 1995 were:

Gallery

File:Cripple Creek.jpg, At the bottom of the Cresson Pipe pit. The pipe is a

phonolite Phonolite is an uncommon extrusive rock, of intermediate chemical composition between felsic and mafic, with texture ranging from aphanitic (fine-grained) to porphyritic (mixed fine- and coarse-grained). Phonolite is a variation of the igneous ...

. Notice the

dike Dyke (UK) or dike (US) may refer to: General uses * Dyke (slang), a slang word meaning "lesbian" * Dike (geology), a subvertical sheet-like intrusion of magma or sediment * Dike (mythology), ''Dikē'', the Greek goddess of moral justice * Dikes, ...

in the middle. File:Cripple Creek4.jpg, Looking into the Cresson Pipe pit. Notice the leach pile on the upper right. File:Cripple Creek2.jpg, Approximately 250 tons being unloaded into the

crusher A crusher is a machine designed to reduce large rocks into smaller rocks, gravel, sand or rock dust. Crushers may be used to reduce the size, or change the form, of waste materials so they can be more easily disposed of or recycled, or to reduce ...

. File:Cripple Creek3.jpg, Looking into the Fuller-Traylor NT Gyratory Crusher, which reduces the ore to fragments of 3/4 of an inch or less. The mine also employs an Excel MP Cone Crusher. File:Cripple Creek5.jpg, Historic shafts reached depths of 3000 feet. However, today, the mine strictly uses surface mining. File:Cripple Creek 11.jpg, Geophysical exploration for old stopes. Notice the stope tunnel on the next bench up, and in the middle. File:Cripple Creek 12.jpg, A new leaching pad being constructed where the ore will be leached in 100 feet layers, extracting the silver-gold-telluride from the mostly

lamprophyre Lamprophyres () are uncommon, small-volume ultrapotassic igneous rocks primarily occurring as dikes, lopoliths, laccoliths, stocks, and small intrusions. They are alkaline silica-undersaturated mafic or ultramafic rocks with high magnesium oxid ...

diatreme A diatreme, sometimes known as a maar-diatreme volcano, is a volcanic pipe formed by a gaseous explosion. When magma Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma is found beneath the ...

s. File:Cripple Creek 13.jpg, Milling facility for extracting higher grade ores.

References

External links

Newmont Goldcorp website

Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company website

Mining Technology Report
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine AngloGold Ashanti Buildings and structures in Teller County, Colorado Gold mines in Colorado History of Teller County, Colorado Open-pit mines Surface mines in the United States Tourist attractions in Teller County, Colorado