York Harbour Metals hits more copper-zinc in effort to revive 124-year-old Newfoundland mine

Toronto-based York Harbour Metals (TSX-V: YORK) has drilled through copper and zinc-rich volcanogenic massive sulphides (VMS) at its flagship York Harbour copper-zinc-silver project in western Newfoundland.

The historic mine operated between 1898 and 1913 and has remain closed ever since despite five separate exploration programs between 1953 and 1992, all of which resulted in a published resource.

By 1913, the mine located 27km from the present-day city of Corner Brook had produced 90,000 tonnes of ore grading between 3% and 12% copper, and 7% zinc.

The most recent drilling has intersected massive sulphides north and south of the main mine zone.

York Harbour acquired the project in March 2021 as Phoenix Gold Corporation and adopted its new name earlier this year.

Continuing to discover mineralisation between known zones

The copper-zinc VMS were drilled within the project’s A Zone — the only zone in the property that was historically mined — as part of an 8,075m program ending last month, with the first assays expected this month.

Meanwhile, the company says it is continuing to discover copper and zinc-rich sulphides both between the known zones of mineralisation, as well as along strike and down dip of them.

This emerging data is on top of previous known drilling, including 10,900m underground and 8,200m from surface, along with airborne and ground geophysical surveys, geological mapping and geochemical sampling.

Over the years this resulted in 11 zones of copper-zinc enriched massive sulphides being identified.

Independent Mining Corp (1953-54), Big Nama Creek Mines (1955), Long Lac Mineral Exploration (1969-70), York Consolidated Exploration (1877) and finally, the former major Noranda in 1992, all released resource estimates.

Drilling also indicates cobalt

In 2009 another Venture Exchange explorer, Messina Minerals, undertook sampling, which confirmed not only copper, zinc and silver but what the present owner describes as “noteworthy” concentrations of cobalt.

York Harbour says that during the latest drilling phase, a few drill holes intersected old workings and had to be abandoned.

However, two of those holes were not stopped before intersecting between 1m and 9m of VMS mineralisation.

“The results show the A Zone has both near-surface mineralisation adjacent to the old mine workings and the mineralisation also extends both southerly along strike and beneath the historic mine workings,” the company added.