33-3 Salton Trough, California and Northern Baja, Mexico Mineral Resource Potential

Session: Borderless Geoscience: Linking Baja and Southern California

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Abstract:

In the 1990’s a research team of geologists and geophysicists was assembled to evaluate the mineral resource potential in the Salton Trough area of California and northern Baja, Mexico.  This analysis used available geologic and geophysical data, Landsat imagery, and mineralized scale and rock samples from geothermal wells.  Field work was needed to evaluate geophysical and Landsat-identified anomalies and to evaluate if the geology further south into Baja, Mexico might be favorable for mineral exploration.

Epithermal gold mineralization is present on the margins of the Salton Trough where the geothermal activity differs from that in the center of the Trough.  Older gold mineralization is also hosted in Mesozoic-age metamorphic rocks along the western margin of the Salton Trough in California.  Field work in northern Baja identified hydrothermally altered rocks that contained multiple episodes of silicification and veining favorable for epithermal mineralization along with gold presence (up to 3.9 ppm Au) in pre-batholitic metamorphic rocks. 

The results of this study documented a variety of mineral deposits along the margins of the Salton Trough extending into northern Baja, Mexico where rocks of similar age are in general better exposed.  No mineralization was found that is related to a Salton Sea geothermal system in the center of the Trough other than scale in well bores.  A possible fossil analog to a Salton Sea-type geothermal system may be one of the large sediment hosted Pb, Zn, Cu deposits in the Proterozoic of northern Australia.

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