Warm Spring in Sulphur (NBMG)

http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/geothermal/site.php?sid=warm%20spring%20in%20sulphur

Warm Spring in Sulphur (Sulphur) (updated 2004)

The Sulphur mining district is an old sulfur-mining area, with minor associated mercury. A ca. 4 Ma hot-springs type gold deposit (Hycroft Mine) has been mined in the district since 1987 (Ebert and others, 1996). No thermal activity is known today, but White (1955a) reported a strong odor of H2S in some of the short adits of the Devil's Corral workings (north edge of Sec. 17 (protracted), T35N, R30E), 2.25 km east of the railroad siding of Floka, and about 5 km northeast of the Hycroft Mine. The U.S. Geological Survey NWIS database reported a “warm spring in Sulphur” (see Chemistry); however, the unique spring number suggests the location to be in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. Sulphur Springs are shown on the Sulphur 7.5-minute topographic map near a road about 2.2 km east of the site of Sulphur. The area was searched by Chris Sladek in April 2004 for any evidence of springs. If there is a spring in the location where maps place it, it would be located within some reclamation ponds that the mine has built to collect any runoff from the leach pads.

Willden (1964, p. 111) suggested that the sulfur was deposited by hot springs having their greatest discharge when the level of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan and the surrounding groundwater level was high. However, it now appears more likely that sulfur was deposited in association with steam-heated hydrothermal alteration associated with the ca. 4 Ma gold mineralization.