El Chanate is a former gold mine in
Sonora
Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into Municipalities of Sonora, 72 ...
, Mexico owned by
Alamos Gold.
Artisanal mining
Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a blanket term for a type of subsistence mining involving a miner who may or may not be officially employed by a List of mining companies, mining company but works independently, mining minerals using the ...
started in the early 19th-century and continued until 2018, at which point operations reduced to leaching.
Description
El Chanate is an open-pit gold mine located in the
Altar Municipality
Altar is a Municipalities of Sonora, municipality in the List of states of Mexico, state of Sonora in north-western Mexico. The municipality had a 2010 census population of 9,049 inhabitants, the vast majority of whom lived in the municipal seat o ...
of
Sonora
Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into Municipalities of Sonora, 72 ...
, close to the
Mexico–United States border
The international border separating Mexico and the United States extends from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from urban areas to deserts. It is the List of ...
,
in the northwest of
Sonora
Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into Municipalities of Sonora, 72 ...
, Mexico that is owned by Canadian corporation
Alamos Gold.
The mine covers 4,618 hectares and is located around a fault, above sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Twenty-seven million tonnes of gold ore was estimated to be on site in 2014, grading 0.74g/t of gold.
History
The mine was worked by artisan miners since the early 19th-century.
Denver
Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...
-based Chanate Gold Mines Co. was registered in 1898.
In the 2007, Capital Gold Corp's subsidiary Minera Santa Rita, started working the mine.
In 2015, a merger between
AuRico Gold
AuRico Gold was an intermediate gold mining and exploration company that, until August 2011, operated only in Mexico. It reached intermediate gold producer status in August 2011 when Northgate Minerals agreed to be taken over for C$1.46 billion. Ga ...
and Alamos Gold, transferred the mine's ownership to the later company.
In 2016, the mine's operators spilled 10,000 litres of cyanide solution, some was captured in ponds and some contained local soil, before being relocated into a lined leach pad.
Mining stopped in late 2018, when operations switched to residual
leaching. As of 2023, the mine's owners had stopped listed it as a producing mine.
See also
*
List of gold mines
References
{{Mining in Mexico
Gold mines in Mexico
Open-pit mines