Up for sale is the Sunset Mine located in the famous Bohemia Mining District of Lane County, Oregon. The Sunset Mine is a single unpatented claim located on the south side of Noonday Ridge, 38 miles from the town of Cottage Grove, OR. Just a few miles from the claim are some of Oregon’s most famous and productive gold mines such as the Champion, Musick, and Noonday Mines.

The Sunset Mine produced gold, silver, lead, zinc & copper. On the claim are four known adits, driven into Noonday ridge, which explore two primary veins. The lower and middle adits are the primary working tunnels, the upper adit is a short prospect. The lower adit crosscuts the vein for several hundred feet and also intersects a secondary vein. The adit then follows the vein for nearly 1,000ft. The lower tunnel contains over 1,200ft of underground workings. The middle adit is a drift along the same primary vein about 100ft higher in elevation. This adit is drifted for approximately 300ft along the vein. The upper adit is only 10ft long and is mostly caved. The fourth "Bonus" adit was driven along a separate vein and is 100ft long. The mine was likely discovered in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. Unfortunately, much of the mine’s history remains a mystery.

In total, this claim contains over 1,600ft of underground workings making it one of the most extensive mines offered for sale on Ebay. While the assays aren’t spectacular, one may wonder why so much underground development was undertaken...The answer is most likely the existence of rich pockets or ore-shoots containing tremendous amounts of gold and silver. Though our team could not locate any of these especially rich pockets, they are most certainly present somewhere in the mine.

Little is known about the history of the Sunset Mine. The earliest mention of the mine we were able to locate was from a newspaper article dated September 14, 1895 which can be seen below.

Considerable development was apparently taking place during this time and likely into the the early 1900’s. The next phase of serious activity occurred during the 1980’s, when a large mining company leased this claim and several others surrounding it. The company spent two years conducting extensive surface trenching with bulldozers and geologic mapping before they went bankrupt. The claim has been under the radar ever since.

The development on the Sunset claim was tremendous. Containing over 1,600ft underground workings, this mine was not simply a prospect, but a mine geared toward industrial scale production. Tens of thousands of dollars were invested into driving the Sunset adits, thus it is safe to assume that such an investment would have been made for a reason.

The Geology at the Sunset mine is very similar to what is found at other mining properties in the Bohemia Mining District. The primary vein explored at the mine is known as the “Cape Horn Vein”. Unlike many veins in the Bohemia Mining District which are narrow and short lived along their strikes and dips, the Cape Horn is wide and persistent, being traced for over 4,000 feet on the surface through a vertical distance of 1,500 feet. The average width of the vein appears to be around 4 feet, with some portions up to 8-10ft in width. Common sulfides include pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, and galena, all of which are more or less common throughout the entirety of the vein. Certain portions of the vein have been heavily mineralized with these sulfides and are just waiting to be mined.

As part of our evaluation of the mine, we had five samples sent in to get assayed. To our surprise, none of the samples showed any significant levels of gold. If the vein was only 1 foot wide and traced for 200 feet along strike, these results would have made us walk away from this mine. However, that is certainly not the case. The Sunset Mine is sitting on top of a tremendous vein. The five grab samples we took are in no way a definitive representation of the values of the vein as a whole.

Many of the other prolific veins in the Bohemia Mining District display similar gold mineralization, where certain portions of the vein contain low values of gold with high grade pockets being found off and on. It cannot be said for certain if any such pockets exist at the Sunset Mine, but the sheer volume of vein material waiting to be sampled certainly warrants further investigation into this possibility. Below are assay results for several Bohemia mines, the Sunset included. There are extreme similarities between the Sunset and some of the other mines in Bohemia. For example, the Helena Mine assayed almost identically to the Sunset. Despite showing such low values, the Helena Mine was actually very productive and is now one of the most famous mines in the district.

Below are the raw values that were sent to us directly from ALS Minerals. These values are in PPM (not oz/ton) but are equivilent to the values given above.

Using some very conservative dimensions of the primary vein, the average assay values and current mineral prices, we were able to calculate the estimated value of the Sunset vein. Note, the vein has been traced over 1,000 ft vertically. The total Sunset vein tonnage was estimated to be 148,000 tons.

Using the 148,000 tons of ore material, we used our assay values to determine the total estimated value of the Sunset vein. Since we did not discover any high grade pockets of gold ore, we excluded gold from the calculation.