The Boulder Copper Porphyry Property (the “Boulder Property”) is comprised of 331 unpatented mineral claims covering 6,620 acres or almost 14 square miles. It is located in Jefferson County, Montana approximately 16 miles (26 km) north-northeast of Butte, Montana, home of the historic Butte mining district. The Boulder Property is also approximately 20 miles (32 km) south-southwest of the Montana Tunnels, another large-scale former base and precious metal producer.
Wikipedia describes the historic production of the Butte district as: “From 1880 through 2005, the mines of the Butte district have produced more than 9.6 million metric tons of copper, 2.1 million metric tons of zinc, 1.6 million metric tons of manganese, 381,000 metric tons of lead, 87,000 metric tons of molybdenum, 715 million troy ounces (22,200 metric tons) of silver, and 2.9 million ounces (90 metric tons) of gold.”
The Butte, Boulder Property, and Montana Tunnels are all situated along the northeast-trending Great Falls Tectonic Zone (GFTZ) which is a continental scale, deep-seated, structural zone of crustal weakness that appears to have been intermittently active since the late Proterozoic (1.4 billion years ago) and at times has tapped deep mantle melts. Most of the epithermal and porphyry metal occurrences in Montana are localized along the GFTZ.
The Butte, Boulder Property, and Montana Tunnels are along or adjacent to a similarly trending major magnetic low along the axis of the GFTZ (see Figure 6 below – USGS regional magnetics, Johnson 1965). The Boulder Property is the least explored of these three magnetic low areas.
The Boulder Property is known to contain a large copper-molybdenum porphyry system within the Boulder Batholith and coeval Elkhorn Mountains Volcanics which is overlain by 300 to 2,100 feet of post-mineral Lowland Creek Volcanics. As a result, the porphyry system on the Boulder Property is not well exposed.
Between 1965 and 1977, the Anaconda Company (Anaconda) and Union Oil (Molycorp) drilled 8 deep core holes on the property into the Boulder Batholith based on the USGS regional magnetics and an Anaconda IP survey. These holes intersected a large porphyry system with low-grade copper mineralization. Continuous mineralized drill intercepts of between 1,255 and 1,614 feet grading a weighted average of between 600 and 1,000 ppm Cu were intersected. Three deep core holes were completed by O.T. Mining in 2004-5, approximately 1 mile southwest of the Anaconda and Molycorp drilling, intersecting similar porphyry alteration and continuous copper mineralization with drill intercepts of between 1,242 and 2,630 feet grading a weighted average of between 313 and 785 ppm Cu. In 2005-6 O.T. Mining conducted extensive geophysics and located potential higher-grade targets within the identified porphyry system however these targets were never drilled and the property has remained dormant since.
Richard C. Capps, PhD, is the qualified person responsible for approving the technical information contained on this website.
Celerity Mineral Corporation is a Canadian company active in exploring the Boulder Copper Porphyry Project located in Jefferson County, Montana, or 16 miles from Butte, Montana home of North America’s largest copper porphyry deposit and mine.