History

History

  • Production records date back to 1860’s (and possibly discovered during the Spanish colonial period 1500’s).
  • 1977 - Consejo de Recursos Minerales commenced assessment work.
  • 1982 - the Coopertiva first company to explore the area, work included rehabilitating the Dolores shaft located on the Carmen-Providencia epithermal trend. 
  • 1994 - Luismin (now Goldcorp) commenced exploration in the area focused on Cerro del Gallo. 
  • 2004 -The operating company San Antón de las Minas S.A. de C.V. (SAM) was formed with the signing of a joint venture agreement between Cerro Resources and Luismin.
  • 2004-2008 San Anton Resources completes 433 drill holes totaling 114,221m of core and RC drilling.
  • Metallurgical, geotechnical and environmental baseline data collection has been ongoing since 2004 to support permitting and feasibility documents.
  • Cerro/San Anton has completed NI 43-101 compliant resource estimates in 2006, 2008 and 2010, a Preliminary Economic Assessment in 2010 and a feasibility study in 2011.

Geology

The San Antón Property is located within the Mesozoic Sierra Madre Oriental terrane and 80 km north of the west northwest trending Trans-Mexico Neovolcanic Belt. The Sierra Madre Oriental terrane is a thin skinned fold-thrust belt of Laramide age (Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary). High level felsic intrusions emplaced into the western two thirds of the terrane provided the mechanism for hydrothermal activity and mineral deposition.

 

The San Antón Property is known to host a variety of styles of mineral deposits, including porphyry copper-gold deposits, intrusion-related gold deposits, epithermal silver-gold deposits, and gold-copper skarn deposits. All of these styles of mineralisation are known to occur within the property concessions held by SAM. Historic mining within the San Antón de las Minas area  concentrated on epithermal veins, however, the main area of present interest is the large low grade bulk mineable gold-copper-silver deposit at Cerro del Gallo where a significant mineral resource has been identified. 

Simplified section through the Cerro del Gallo geology and mineralised domains

Geologic map and drill hole locations at Cerro del Gallo, also showing the extent of the copper domain and the 2009 gold domain