Silver Range expands Alamo gold-copper target in La Paz County

Silver Range Resources said its latest work at the Alamo property in La Paz County has pushed the company’s gold-copper target area beyond 1.6 kilometers, a step that could set up more drilling, more disturbance on desert land and more scrutiny of water use if the project keeps advancing. The June 24 update still stops well short of a mine plan, but it marks a larger footprint in a part of western Arizona where exploration, old shafts and county-level concerns about access and land use overlap.

The company said it extended its survey grid northwest into a covered pediment area and then ran 481 soil samples on 25-metre spacing with 100-metre line spacing, along with 11.7 line-kilometres of very low frequency electromagnetic surveying. Silver Range said the soil program turned up gold values as high as 1.34 grams per tonne and copper up to 649 parts per million. Prospecting added 23 float and bedrock grab samples, including two above 5 grams per tonne gold and six above 1 percent copper.

The strongest grab sample reported by Silver Range ran 21.8 grams per tonne gold and 6.99 percent copper. Another came back at 12.75 grams per tonne gold and 2.71 percent copper. The company said the VLF-EM work used the Jim Creek, Washington station and lined up with northwest-striking conductors it believes are tied to gold-copper mineralization beneath shallow cover.

Silver Range describes Alamo as a detachment-fault-related iron oxide copper-gold target in the Harcuvar Mountains, with mineralized structures that may converge under cover. That matters in La Paz County because the company is not talking about an isolated anomaly; it is talking about a growing exploration zone in the Harcuvar foothills, where any move from sampling into drilling would mean more vehicle traffic on local roads, more land access questions and, eventually, a closer look at water sourcing and reclamation.

The property also sits in a district with a long mining record. Silver Range says Alamo covers the former Wenden Mine and points to a July 1918 Scientific & Mining Press report saying ore from the Cunningham Pass district shipped at grades of 18 to 20 percent copper and about $10 gold per ton. The company says the Barkdoll Shaft has drifts down to the 1,000-foot level and the Copper Chief, also called the Old No. 1 Shaft, has drifts to the 400-foot level.

Altius Minerals holds a 1 percent net smelter return royalty on the property under a 2023 agreement, adding another layer to an asset that already has a defined ownership structure. A United States Geological Survey report on the Harcuvar Mountains Wilderness Study Area identified small inferred resources of 8,000 tons grading 1.8 percent copper and another 2,000 tons grading 0.030 ounce per short ton gold and 1.15 percent copper, evidence that the district has long attracted attention even before modern geochemistry and geophysics sharpened the target.