Arizona Eagle Mining acquires three silver properties in Yavapai County
Arizona Eagle Mining has expanded its patented landholdings by 18 percent through the acquisition of three dormant silver mines, extending its mineralized corridor and signaling deeper exploration potential in a historic Arizona district.
Arizona Eagle Mining finalized the purchase of a 62-acre property containing three former silver operations in Yavapai County. The deal secures an operating water well with extraction rights and adds five parcels roughly one kilometre northeast of the firm's McCabe gold-silver deposit.
This acquisition stretches the known structural corridor of mineralization by 50 percent, pushing it from three kilometres to 4.5 kilometres northeast of McCabe. It also boosts the company’s total patented land ownership to 410 acres, representing an 18 percent increase in its regional footprint.
Investors reacted positively to the consolidation strategy, sending Arizona Eagle shares up 8.75 percent on the Toronto exchange. For shareholders of the C$39.4 million market capitalization company, the deal secures critical infrastructure like the water well while expanding the geological footprint in a single contiguous block.
The newly acquired sites were major silver producers in the state until the 1930s but have remained privately held and inactive for nearly a century. Historical extraction was restricted to shallow oxidized zones, with the deepest shafts reaching just 150 metres.
Chief Executive Kevin Reid noted that this historical limitation leaves significant room for modern exploration below the existing workings. “These high-grade silver mines served as major sources of silver production in Arizona until the 1930s,” Reid stated, adding that the shallow mining depths create “the opportunity for further discoveries at depth.”
Recent surface testing across the Eagle Silver property yielded silver grades reaching 344 g/t. Material sampled from the Arizona National Mine waste pile proved even richer, returning up to 861 g/t silver alongside 15.6 g/t gold.
The company is applying the same systematic exploration strategy used at McCabe to the newly secured claims. Between 1980 and 1984, Stan West Mining invested $12 million to drill and develop the McCabe deposit to a depth of 315 metres.
A subsequent $23 million expenditure in 1986 funded a 500 tpd mill and the commencement of underground extraction. During that era, Stan West published a total reserve estimate for the site detailing 878,000 ounces of gold at 11.7 g/t and 5,120,000 ounces of silver at 69 g/t.
Management intends to leverage modern exploration techniques to evaluate the deeper extensions of these legacy assets. Reid stated that the firm plans to utilize systematic drilling to revive the sites, noting they have been dormant for almost 100 years.
