Nevada King finds shallow gold at Atlanta project

Nevada King Gold (TSX-V: NKG; US-OTC: NKGFF) said new drilling at its past-producing Atlanta mine in eastern Nevada returned oxide gold-silver mineralization near surface. The stock jumped.

Hole B25-101 in the Silver Park East zone cut 14.6 metres grading 0.8 gram gold per tonne and 20.28 grams silver from 7 metres downhole, Nevada King said Tuesday. Another hole, B25-100, cut 14.6 metres from surface grading 0.63 gram gold and 8.35 grams silver.

“We view the results positively,” Desjardins Capital Markets analyst Allison Carson said Tuesday in a note. “They support the satellite pit potential of Silver Park East, where we believe there could be 150,000–250,000 ounces.”

Nevada King surged 13% to 22¢ Tuesday morning in Toronto, boosting the company’s market value to about $93 million (US$68 million). The stock has traded between 12¢ and 33¢ in the past year.

Zone expansion

Tuesday’s results include four holes drilled west of Silver Park East, which have expanded the main zone by to about 300 metres by 500 metres, and five step-out holes that have intersected mineralization 350 metres south of the main target.

The shallow results “confirm that Silver Park East is larger than we initially recognized,” Justin Daley, the company’s vice president of exploration, said in a statement. “Expanding the footprint to 300 metres by 500 metres and identifying surface mineralization 350 metres to the south highlights the scale of the system.

“Importantly, the mineralization occurs in the same silicified breccia, at the same unconformity, and along the same structural corridor as the Atlanta resource zone, reinforcing our view that these are parts of a large-scale system.”

Other highlights include hole B25-96, which cut 9.8 metres of 0.52 gram gold and 1.5 grams silver from 2 metres downhole, and hole B25-110, which intersected 29 metres from surface grading 0.13 gram gold and 14.7 grams silver.

Regional exploration

Nevada King is about 10% into a 20,000-metre regional exploration program planned for this year. Other assay results are expected shortly.

Located 264 km northeast of Las Vegas, Atlanta is an open-pit mine that sits on an intrusive-dominated gold system. After completing more than 100,000 metres of drilling on the 130-sq.-km property and making multiple high-grade gold discoveries, Nevada King says that the district probably has multi-million-ounce potential.

Discovered in the late 19th century, Atlanta was the site of underground and small-scale surface mining from 1905 to 1966. Between 1975 and 1985, open-pit production recovered 110,000 oz. gold and 800,000 oz. silver from 1.5 million tonnes of material.

Nevada King purchased the Atlanta property in 2018 and began exploratory drilling in 2021. Two other historic mines are located nearby: the Silver Park open-pit mine and the Bradshaw underground mine at Atlanta South.