Golden Dawn looks to revive Greenwood

Golden Dawn Minerals (gom-v) wants to breathe mining life back into Greenwood, B.C., for the third time.
The small town of some 600 souls in south-central B.C. saw its fortunes swell at the turn of the last century and again in the 1950s, both times courtesy of a gold rush, and now it is waiting to see if Golden Dawn can usher in another round of the good times.
If the first batch of assay results from its 16-hole drilling program on the project is any indication, the company could be on its way towards doing just that.
The results came out of the Wild Rose area, which along with Tam O’Shanter and Boundary Falls make up the 30-sq.-km Greenwood gold project.
Results were highlighted by one hole returning 3.42 grams gold per tonne and 0.1% copper over 5 metres and another returning 1.47 grams gold and 0.62% copper over 2.55 metres.
Those results came out of three holes drilled on the Wild Rose and Wild Cat zones. Three more holes are set to be released shortly.
What has Golden Dawn’s chief executive Wolf Wiese optimistic is that the drilling backs up the company’s thesis that the higher-grade veins, namely Wild Cat and Wild Rose, are surrounded by a halo of lower-grade mineralization that may make the project amenable to open-pit bulk-tonnage mining.
Buttressing that confidence is a historic hole drilled on the property that hit 63 metres grading 0.95 gram gold and 0.40% copper.
Wiese says, while it is early, mineralization at the property is similar to that found at the historic Rossland mine, which sits 40 km east of the project and produced some 2.8 million oz. gold under various owners.
Indeed, the project lies in an area that is rich with gold mining tradition, as just 50 km south, on the other side of the Canada and U.S. border, sits Kinross Gold’s (k-t, kgc-n) Buckhorn mine – which while smaller in terms of ounces it produces, is one of Kinross’s more profitable mines.
As for its method of attack in terms of delineating its property, Wiese says, the company’s drills have been and will continue to track the Wild Cat and Wild Rose veins northwest from the Wild Rose area up into the recently acquired Tam O’Shanter.
Tam O’Shanter itself sits next to proven gold mining ground, as the deposit which first put Greenwood on the map, the Motherlode deposit, is adjacent to Tam O’Shanter. Motherlode produced over 200,000 oz. gold in its life.
 Wiese says the company plans to drill another 12 holes on its march from the Wild Rose zone towards Tam O’Shanter, and that the program will get underway by late January.
The Wild Rose and Wild Cat vein systems are part of a more extensive gold and copper mineralized zone, named Deadwood zone, which is up to 200 metres in width and extends over a distance of more than 2,000 metres between Wild Rose and Tam O’Shanter.
Golden Dawn currently has $500,000 in the kitty, and is financed through its 12-hole drill program. Wiese says the company will be looking to raise $5 million in the coming months.