Geophysics - Case History of the Juniper Prospect

THE Juniper Prospect is in Carleton County, N. B., at approximately 46" 31' north latitude, 67" 20' west longitude. During the summer of 1955 an area in west-central New Brunswick was selected for aerial electromagnetic prospecting with American Metal Co.'s helicopter-mounted equipment. Generalized, small-scale government geologic maps had suggested that this area was located along the western border of the northeast-trending granitic backbone of northwestern New Brunswick and might be underlain by the Ordovician-Silurian sediments and volcanics that are the host rocks for the recently discovered sul-fide deposits of the Bathurst-Newcastle district. The helicopter electromagnetic equipment located an anomalous conductive area, coincident with a small aeromagnetic closure, about five miles west of the town of Juniper. Subsequently 30 mining claims (total area about 6600 x 8000 ft) were staked and company personnel conducted geological, geophysical, and geochemical investigations on the property. The claims and immediately contiguous areas were mapped geologically, and an area of about 2000 x 4000 ft was soil-sampled and also surveyed by ground electromagnetic and gravity methods. Finally six diamond drillholes, totaling 3500 ft in length, were drilled to test the anomalous conditions discovered by the several exploration techniques used. The discovery of base metal sulfides during drilling was a technical success for the exploration methods, but the quantity of sulfides was too small to be profitably exploited.