45°54′20″N 112°1′22″W / 45.90556°N 112.02278°W The Golden Sunlight mine is an open pit gold mine in Jefferson County, Montana, 5 mi (8 km) northeast of Whitehall and 24 mi (39 km) east of Butte, Montana. The mine sits at an elevation of 6,000 ft (1,829 m) on the Bull Mountain range.
Owned and operated by Barrick Gold, the mine has been in operation since 1975, and in 2016 produced 34,000 ounces (964 kg) of gold. Measured and indicated resources at December 2015 were 691,000 oz (19,590 kg) at a gold grade of 1.46 grams per tonne.[1][2][3]
Golden Sunlight is a conventional open-pit mine with a co-located ore treatment plant using carbon-in-pulp technology as well as sand tailings retreatment, where pyrite is gravity-separated from the cyclone underflow fraction, and reground and leached to recover gold that would otherwise be lost to tailings. In total mine operations employ approximately 150 people.[3][4]
References
- ^ "Golden Sunlight". Barrick Gold Corporation. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
- ^ "Gold Mineral Resources" (pdf). Barrick Gold Corporation. 31 December 2015. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
- ^ a b "Golden Sunlight Mine, Inc. partial pit backfill supplemental EIS and 5B optimization" (PDF). Bureau of Land Management. 10 March 2009. Archived from the original (pdf) on 9 May 2009. Retrieved 5 March 2017.
- ^ Weyer, Charmaine; Scyphers, Joe; Gabelman, Joan (May 2013). "Secondary gold recovery & reclamation of historic mine properties" (pdf). 21st Annual Mine Design, Operations & Closure Conference. Montana Tech. p. 34. Retrieved 5 March 2017.