HISTORY

The San Anton Property lies within the old gold-silver mining district of San Anton de las Minas, a mining district lying roughly parallel to the better-known Guanajuato Mining District some 23 kms to the southwest.  Exploration and mining in both districts has historically focused on finding and exploiting high grade epithermal veins.  Commencing with the discovery at Guanajuato on 11 June 1548 of rich silver bearing quartz veins known as the ‘Veins of Light”, the state of Guanajuato ultimately became the third largest silver producer and sixth largest goldfield in Mexico.

The San Anton de las Minas Mining District is reported to have had large but unknown quantities of gold and silver production dating from Spanish colonial times.  Although local townspeople claim that the mines such as Providencia, Campa, Santa Catalina and Ave de Gracia have been worked since the 1700’s, there is no known record of their past production and they are now abandoned. 

There are numerous shafts, adits, pits and other superficial workings along the three main structural trends in the vicinity of Cerro del Gallo that attest to past mining activity.  None of this prior mining activity is believed to have exceeded a depth of about 90m. 

Mining activity at San Anton de las Minas for which physical records exist dates back to the 1860’s.  Numerous national and international companies commenced operations in the Property area during this time, focusing on the gold-silver veins of Providencia, Carmen and Ave de Gracia.  The preservation of the historic stone ruins of the processing plant and shaft at San Anton de las Minas assists with dating the more concerted mining activity.  Mining ceased around 1910 due to the onset of the Mexican Revolution. 

There has been intermittent small scale undocumented production throughout the 20th century.  In the mid 1970’s, the Consejo de Recursos Minerales (CRM) declared a national mineral reserve that covered the mining claims over the Providencia-Carmen vein systems.

Modern day documented mining activities commenced in 1982 when the Santa Fe Mining Cooperative of Guanajuato commenced rehabilitation and diamond drilling operations focusing on the Providencia, Carmen and Ave de Gracia epithermal vein trends. The Cooperative focused the majority of their work on the rehabilitation of the Purisma-Empalizada workings, La Moria adit and the Dolores Shaft, including the construction of above-ground infrastructure.  Due to financial difficulties and internal disputes the Cooperative ceased production at the Dolores Mine in 2000.

Cerro del Gallo was first recognized as a possible gold-silver-copper target by CRM during detailed surface investigations in the 1970’s. The alteration system was first drilled by the Santa Fe Mining Cooperative in December 1984 (discovery hole BNo. 251) and later with four more diamond core holes in 1997. Luismin S.A. de C.V. (“Luismin”), now a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldcorp Inc., commenced exploration at San Anton in 1994, focusing on Cerro del Gallo.

Luismin completed a limited exploration program of rock chip sampling (400 samples over an area of 880 by 700m), trenching (10 @ 1m X 200m), geophysics and drilling (11 core holes and 4 RC). All holes were drilled around the flanks of Cerro del Gallo to test anomalous gold-silver-copper-molybdenum rock-chip geochemistry and chargeability geophysical anomalies. Exploration was however, constrained by the small size of their tenement holdings, which at that time consisted of just Ave de Gracia and El Cipres.

It soon became apparent that the mineralization extended well beyond the Luismin tenements onto ground held by the Santa Fe Mining Cooperative which drilled four core holes close to the boundary and obtained similar results.

Luismin purchased the Cooperative tenements in May 2004 and consolidated ownership of the ground covering the system, thereby allowing modern systematic exploration to take place.