Summary
The Salmon National Forest administers 1,776,994 net acres of mountainous terrain located in
east-central Idaho. Most of the Forest is in Lemhi County; only a small portion falls within
Idaho and Valley Counties. Approximately 426,114 acres of the Frank Church-River of No
Return Wilderness extends into the western part of the Forest and mineral entry is severely
restricted. Because of its location within the Salmon River drainage, the Forest also is subject to
numerous issues surrounding restoration of anadromous fish runs.
Mineral production from the Salmon National Forest began during 1866 when placer gold was
discovered in Leesburg Basin. Hardrock mining quickly spread throughout the Forest and many
deposits containing a wide range of commodities were discovered and developed. Although
early records are sketchy, production is estimated to include 940,000 ounces gold, 654,000
ounces silver, 61.9 million pounds copper, 8.9 million pounds lead, 13.9 million pounds cobalt,
208,000 pounds zinc, and 37,000 tons fluorite mill feed.
Mineral resources are large, diverse, and occur in many deposit types including exhalative,
stockwork, disseminated, vein, replacement, sedimentary, skarn, breccia pipe, porphyry, and
placer. The largest cobalt resource in the United States occurs in the Blackbird Mining District.
Other resources include gold, silver, copper, lead, molybdenum, phosphate, manganese, iron,
fluorite, uranium, thorium, rare earth oxides, and barite.
|
First posted November 19, 1999
Part or all of this report is presented in Portable Document Format (PDF). For best results viewing and printing PDF documents, it is recommended that you download the documents to your computer and open them with Adobe Reader. PDF documents opened from your browser may not display or print as intended. Download the latest version of Adobe Reader, free of charge.
|