Gold Districts of California

GREENHORN MOUNTAIN

Location and History. This district is in Kern County about 28 miles northeast of Bakersfield. The first discovery of gold in Kern County was made in Greenhorn Creek in 1851 by a member of General John C. Fremont's party. A rush soon followed, and the town of Petersburg was established. Gold-mining activity declined before 1890, but there has been minor prospecting since. Most of the output has been from placer mining.

Geology. Much of the area is underlain by quartz diorite. There are a few bodies of metamorphic rocks and also some pegmatite dikes. The chief placer deposits were in Greenhorn, Fremont, Bradshaw, and Black Gulch Creeks. There are numerous small, poorly mineralized quartz veins, most of which are a few miles east of David Guard Station. The gold is in the free state and there is very little sulfide mineralization. Uranium-bearing peat bog was discovered in 1955 in the northwest part of the district. 

Excerpt from: Gold Districts of California, by: W.B. Clark, California Department of Conservation, Division of Mines and Geology, Bulletin 193, 1970.

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