Terronera Project Expands In Mexico
VANCOUVER - Endeavour Silver Corp. has expanded the footprint of its Terronera Project, located in Jalisco State, Mexico, to 20,128 hectares through the acquisition of two adjacent groups of mineral concessions, La Sanguijuela and Cerro Gordo, covering multiple mineralized vein structures.
Bradford Cooke, CEO, said, “These two acquisitions not only expand our property footprint at Terronera, they add multiple new mineralized vein structures with strong resource potential where we can add value through the drill bit. We look forward to increasing our drill budget next year to advance our sizable resource base in this district scale, high-grade, low sulfidation epithermal vein system.”
Endeavour has acquired an option to purchase the 2,759 hectare La Sanguijuela concession for US$550,000, payable over four years. La Sanguijuela lies adjacent to the northern boundary of the Terronera concessions around 10 kilometers (km) northwest of the historic mine adit on the Terronera vein and covers the possible northwest extension of the Terronera vein and the possible west extension of the Los Reyes vein.
Mapping and sampling have delineated five mineralized vein structures at La Sanguijuela, the main one being the Los Cuates vein. Los Cuates has been traced over a length of 1.5 km, with thicknesses of 2 to 6 meters (m), and sampling has consistently returned anomalous values of 0.5-5.0 grams per tonne (gpt) gold and 50-300 gpt silver. A few small historic mine workings, shafts and adits were located in the area, but there does not appear to be any modern exploration of the property.
The Los Cuates, El Chacuaco, El Nogal, El Puerto and La Pastura veins are hosted by the same Lower Cretaceous volcanic sequence of andesites capped by rhyolites as seen at the Terronera and La Luz veins on the Terronera property. One key to successful exploration of these veins will be the identification of the “bonanza zone”, a sub-horizontal band of higher grade mineralization that reflects the original boiling zone within these low sulfidation, epithermal vein systems. The bonanza band at Terronera spans the 1100 m to 1600 m elevations. Strongly anomalous surface gold and silver values sampled at elevations of 1350 to 1400 m within the Los Cuates and El Chacuaco veins indicate these veins lie within the bonanza elevations.
Endeavour has acquired by staking the 2,200 hectares Cerro Gordo concessions, located 10 km south of the historic mine adit on the Terronera vein. These concessions cover the possible southeast extensions of four Terronera footwall veins, Pena Gorda-Canoas, Los Venados-La Carbonera, Pena Blanca-El Alacran and El Mirador-Los Tablones, as well as three other veins, El Maguey-El Madrono, Monte Obscuro-Musgos and La Muda-Monte Grande.
Mapping and sampling returned anomalous gold and silver values within the two main veins, Pena Gorda-Canoas in the Terronera footwall and El Maguey-El Madrono to the south. The El Maguey-El Madrono vein was traced over a length of 1.6 km with a thickness of 2 to 4 m, carrying values of 0.6 to 2 gpt gold and 10-30 gpt silver. The Pena Gorda-Canoas vein outcrops over a length of 1.7 km with a thickness of 2 to 5 m, returning values up to 0.5 gpt gold and 40 gpt silver.
Like the La Sanguijuela veins, the Cerro Gordo veins are also hosted by the Lower Cretaceous volcanic sequence of andesites capped by rhyolites. The sampled elevations around 2100 to 2500 m are higher than the Terronera vein, suggesting the possibility that the Cerro Gordo veins sit within an uplifted fault block relative to the Terronera and La Sanguijuela veins.
The mineralized vein structures on the La Sanguijuela and Cerro Gordo properties have never been previously drilled. Endeavour plans to drill portions of the Los Cuates, El Maguey, Terronera and other veins on the Terronera Project during the 4th quarter, 2020.