DeWeese Lake Road noticed that trucks were dropping large amounts of supplies on BLM land that bordered their property. A few days later, a drilling rig showed up, and a team of men commenced drilling into the dusty sagebrush prairie that defines the dry ground of that region. At first, a few people thought it was drilling for water and that in a few days, they would be gone. However, more and more piles of supplies appeared along County Road 240.
Nobody seemed to know what the rig was doing or what they were drilling for. The process was messy, and so was the placement of supplies. Gallons of diesel splashed on the roadway, drill pipes were stacked in the drainage ditch, and tanks, crates, and steel containers littered the landscape. While the Sheriff did respond to the calls about the spilled diesel, they let the drillers off with a warning. The drillers did not give straight answers when questioned by the neighbors.
However, as expected, the drilling is part of a Canadian company called Viscount Mining that has been engaged in exploratory drilling in the region since at least 2018. The company released a press release on Yahoo! Finance on January 22 that “Viscount Mining Corp. is pleased to announce drilling has commenced on the Passiflora in Silver Cliff, Colorado.”
As the Tribune noted in July 2018, “Viscount Mining, which is not a mining company in spite of its corporate title, is able to inform both actual mining companies and the public what the composition is of their holdings, but is unable to determine the market return on their investment.” In short, the company is a type of mineral rights promotion company that finds cheap mineral rights, drills test holes, and releases flashy press releases to get interest from large mineral buyers or even mining companies. This is a common practice in minerals and oils.
But Viscount Mining Corp. has not always been a simple and harmless prospecting company. In 2024, they sued the town of Silver Cliff for gravel mining north of Silver Cliff, claiming that the city allowed other companies to take valuable Silver out of their mineral rights. The courts disagreed with Viscount, and the case was dismissed.
It is well known that the silver in the region is not worth mining for large corporations but Viscount claims that this newest spree of drilling is due to a recent discovery of a magnetic anomaly in the region that might indicate more silver than was previously realized. “The Quantum Geophysics TITAN MT completed resistive survey undertaken by Viscount showed that a strong conductor was present starting at a depth of around 400 meters, and continues to ~ 1.5km (the lower limit might be somewhat different). Viscount is inaugurating an 8,000m drill program starting with drilling a 1,500m core exploratory discovery hole to try to determine the nature of this anomaly.”
The press release continued, “During the Viscount drill campaign in 2017 at the Kate Silver Resource, field reconnaissance noted that areas to the north seemed to exhibit phyllic/argillic alteration. This was confirmed by drilling in this area in 2020 to 2022, and showed anomalous precious and base metal concentrations. The only historic report available on the Passiflora target is one written by R. A. Rivera for Coca Mines in 1983. In this report, Rivera gives a brief history of the exploration efforts, and a reserve calculation for the Passiflora target released indicated at least 64M oz. silver at 51.9 grams per ton.”
Yet, this only equates to $58.99 per ton of silver if the theory about the silver is proven to be true (which all past test drilling failed to confirm). This price is unlikely to justify starting a large mining operation to the north of the towns. In addition, the location of the BLM property that is currently being test drilled is near several residential neighborhoods and it is unlikely that a large mine would be able to operate in the area due to lack of space and water.
For now, the neighbors of the drilling can only sit and wait as the Viscount drill rig burrows into the earth.
– Jordan Hedberg