The Troy Canyon silver gold project is located in the Grant Range of eastern Nye County, Nevada, approximately 150 km east of Tonopah. The project consists of 59 contiguous unpatented mineral claims that cover 493 hectares of land centered approximately on the historical Locke gold mine. High-grade gold mineralization occurs within massive quartz veins, vein breccias and narrower sheeted vein and stockwork zones. The quartz system is exposed for 300 meters along the sheared, northerly trending contact between hanging wall recrystallized limestone of Cambrian age and footwall quartz monzonite of the Tertiary (23 Ma) Troy pluton.

The Troy Gold-Silver Project has seen limited modern exploration effort and was a former small-scale producer. Gold mineralization was first identified at the project in 1867 and small-scale mining commenced in 1869. The most recent mining took place from 1948 to 1950 where 643 ounces of gold and 660 ounces of silver were reportedly produced from 1,859 tons of mineralized rock, at an average grade of 11.83 g/t gold (0.345 oz/t Au) and 12 g/t silver (0.355 oz/t Ag).

The area of the old Locke Mine in Troy Canyon hosts mesothermal gold and silver mineralization with potential for economically significant concentrations. Mesothermal systems typically are persistent to great depths. To date the system seen on the Troy Canyon Project has only been investigated over a vertical extent of approximately 180 metres, with the bulk of the work having been concentrated on the hanging wall of the quartz host.

Recent assessments (late 1980s to early 2000s) of the project by multiple companies include sampling of surface and underground quartz exposures, mine dumps, mineral processing facilities, and tailings piles. In 2004, Miranda Gold Corp determined that stopes were developed on multiple ‘stacked’ north-trending, moderately east-dipping veins. Three of 13 underground stope rock grab samples collected by Miranda reportedly returned 47.8 g/t gold, 48.4 g/t gold, and a high of 576 g/t gold* (16.8 oz/ton Au). The remaining ten rock samples collected from underground stope and adit wall outcrops returned values ranging from <1 g/t gold to 8.8 g/t gold, and from 0 g/t silver to 27 g/t silver.

In 2007, Portage Minerals Inc. completed a multi-parameter exploration program on the project that included a property-wide soil geochemical survey, focused IP/Resistivity and CSAMT surveys, and rock chip sampling and surveying of the main Locke mine underground workings. The soil geochemical program identified several zones of anomalous gold outbound of the mine and a strong northwest trending IP anomaly in the southeast part of the survey area.

Gold mineralization is associated with grey, late-stage vuggy, sugary limonitic quartz and minor sphalerite, galena and arsenopyrite, and a strong gold-bismuth correlation suggests that mineralization is part of an intrusive-related mesothermal gold vein system. Compiled data for the Troy Canyon Project reference only one exploration drill-hole which apparently was terminated in mineralized limestone before reaching the vein.