CTGO:CA:
CTGO:
SILVER:
GOLD:
CTGO:CA:
CTGO:
SILVER:
GOLD:
The property covers the Coleman, Lucky Shot, and War Baby mines along a continuous 1.6-kilometer high-grade vein system in the Willow Mining District.
The Willow Creek district produced approximately 610,874 ounces of gold through 1950, with the Lucky Shot mine alone producing 252,000 ounces at an average head grade of roughly 46 g/t.
Recent underground drilling continues to return bonanza-grade intercepts along the Coleman-Lucky Shot-War Baby-Murphy trend.
Excellent infrastructure, with road access connecting the mine site to the Parks Highway and Railroad access approximately 20 road miles away via secondary road and sealed highway.
Overview
Lucky Shot is a past-producing, high-grade gold project in the Willow Mining District of south central Alaska and a core piece of Contango Silver & Gold’s Alaska gold hub. The property includes 725 acres of patented mining claims and 7,865 acres of State of Alaska mining claims, totaling approximately 8,590 acres covering three former producing gold mines: Coleman, Lucky Shot, and War Baby.
The three historic mines sit along a continuous low-angle structural zone occupied by a series of high-grade quartz veins hosting free gold with minor sulfide and telluride mineralization, all within a Cretaceous-age granodiorite intrusion. The known Lucky Shot vein structure extends approximately 1.6 kilometers from the Coleman block through the War Baby block, with drilling extending it a further 600 meters east into the Murphy block.
The Lucky Shot project consists of a mine site located 180 road kilometers (112 road miles) north of Anchorage, Alaska. Infrastructure is excellent with road access between the mine site and the 4-lane Parks Highway connecting Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Key Project Metrics
Geological setting
The Willow Creek Mining District covers approximately 175 square kilometers in the southern Talkeetna Mountains and straddles the margin of the granodiorite batholith that forms the range, bounded to the south by the Castle Mountain fault system. Total district gold production through 1950 was reported at approximately 610,874 troy ounces from ores grading between 30 and 60 g/t, making it the third largest historic lode gold district in Alaska.
The Coleman, Lucky Shot, and War Baby mines are controlled by a continuous low-angle, listric fault zone occupied by quartz veins and sheared breccia zones from one meter to several meters wide. The veins are central to a broader alteration halo of sericite, chlorite, albite, leucoxene, and ankerite-siderite extending tens of meters into the host granodiorite, and they carry native gold with pyrite, arsenopyrite, tetrahedrite-tennantite, sphalerite, galena, and telluride minerals.
Two high-angle faults segment the vein into the Coleman, Lucky Shot, and War Baby blocks, with a third structure separating the Murphy block further east. Vertical and lateral offsets between blocks are small enough that historic mining continued across faults in a near-continuous manner. The Company believes the contact environment between the Willow Creek batholith and the adjacent schist package, juxtaposed along the Hatcher Pass fault, is an ideal setting for the district’s listric fault-controlled quartz vein gold deposits.
Historic production from the Lucky Shot mine was reported at 252,000 ounces from 169,000 tons of free-milling ore, an average head grade of roughly 1.5 oz/ton, with additional production from Coleman and War Baby. Selected historic and modern drill results along the trend are compiled in the linked technical documents.
The historical production information presented here is based on reports filed by prior owners and operators. The Company has not undertaken independent work to verify the previously reported information, and historic estimates should not be treated as current mineral resources, mineral reserves, or exploration results.
Gold was mined at Coleman, Lucky Shot, and War Baby until the mines were shut down in 1942 as part of the World War II effort. Enserch Exploration conducted an extensive program in the 1980s, constructing a 457-meter exploration adit below the Lucky Shot mine and drilling 11 underground and 7 surface core holes in 1984. Full Metal Minerals drilled 34,103 meters in 173 surface core holes along the trend from 2005 to 2009, and Gold Torrent published a pre-feasibility assessment of the historic work in 2016. Contango acquired the property in 2021 and has since rehabilitated underground access and advanced modern exploration, culminating in the SK-1300 Technical Report Summary published in May 2023.
Contango’s focus at Lucky Shot is growing the high-grade resource along the 2.2-kilometer Coleman-Lucky Shot-War Baby-Murphy trend, where recent underground drilling has returned intercepts including 60.22 g/t Au over 5.92 m. The project hosts an Indicated resource of 226,000 tonnes at 14.5 g/t Au (105,000 ounces) and an Inferred resource of 82,000 tonnes at 9.5 g/t Au (25,000 ounces), with a resource update and feasibility study targeted for the first half of 2027. In 2026 the Company acquired the underlying Lucky Shot lease and net smelter returns royalty from Alaska Hardrock Inc. and settled the outstanding milestone payments, securing 100% unencumbered ownership of the project. The consolidation enhances project economics and simplifies the path toward a future production decision under the Direct Ship Ore model, which would see mined material processed at existing permitted facilities rather than requiring new mill construction.
