(This piece was originally published in the Yukon News on April 21, 1999; seven months later, Shawn Ryan was honoured as the 1999 Prospector of the Year for his research leading to the discovery of a high-grade gold skarn on the Horn claims and other occurrences located north of Dawson City, Yukon. He has since been heralded as "the million-dollar-a-year" prospector by his colleagues who describe Ryan as a "prospector who gets around".)

Joel White doesn't want to make any cavalier comments about what the Horn gold property is or is not. "We have the vein opened and feel this is a major deposit of high-grade nature," said the president of the Dawson-based Canadian United Minerals Inc.

But he and his partner Shawn Ryan need to do more work on the claims abutting the northern boundary of the proposed Tombstone Park 50 kilometres northeast of Dawson City.

Canadian United applied to Northern Affairs for a mining land-use permit to do a diamond-drilling program this summer. And it wants to bulk test the product with a small, 100-ton-a-day, chemical-free mill that can be operated by one or two people.

Filing application No. 00002 on February 16 hurled the project into a fishbowl for the public's microscopic scrutiny. The claims are located within the Tombstone study area--but not in the core park area, emphasized White.

The Horn property is not visible from the core park area nor from the Dempster Highway. It is tucked into a boxed canyon and backdropped by a sheer 300-metre granite cliff.

As early as 1971-72, when construction began on the Dempster Highway--a Road to Resources project--the government noted the natural beauty of the Tombstone pinnacles and valley. It recommended the viewscape treasure be preserved.

The integrity of the proposal is being maintained, assured the 35-year-old White. On page III/IV operating plan, Canadian United went so far as to opt for a helicopter-supported program in lieu of a more economical winter-access route.

"We have never applied for an access permit into the Horn claims up the Blackstone River," White stressed. "Therefore, we've never been turned down for the application."

White, a resident of Dawson City and father of four youngsters, is one of the top placer-gold operators in the area. However, he doesn't focus on the Klondike portion where his gold-smitten great-grandfather Johnson, a B.C. pioneer rancher, came to prospect in 1914.

Rather, Coulee Resources Ltd., started sluicing Sixtymile country in 1990 until Glacier Creek reserves dried up. Five seasons ago, in 1995, the company turned attention to the Black Hills district. It had been written off by others as low grade and no good.

White's five employees keep the Black Hills camp humming on a 24-hour schedule. In town, two employees are occupied in the machine sop that caters to other placer miners and to Viceroy Resources, which operates the nearby Brewery Creek heap-leach gold mine.

White is a respected member in the placer community and served several years as a board member of the Klondike Placer Miners' Association. Nevertheless, he had a strong bent for hardrock, which enjoys very little local ownership in the Yukon. "Traditionally, it's a play of outsiders who do these comprehensive projects with publicly-raised funds," he explained.

In early 1997, a mutual friend introduced him to another Dawson resident. Shawn Ryan had good ideas and no financial wherewithal.

Ryan, who comes from a long line of miners, was born in Elliot Lake in 1963 and raised in nearby Timmins, another venerable Ontario mining town.

A meticulous researcher, he learned his sleuthing skills while working geophysical surveys for a company in Arctic Quebec and Northern Ontario in the 1980s. To continue an outdoors lifestyle, his trail eventually led northwest. He had a good understanding of hardrock. Yet he had landed on a piece of the planet famous as a placer camp.

Ryan, who likes to romanticize the prospector, chooses to live like the oldtimers. The family residence, built in 1903, is a small, wood-heated cabin five kilometres south of town. Ryan, his wife and two preschoolers are quite comfortable without the modern amenities of electricity and running water.

When the mercury slips to the bottom of the thermometer, a three-week trip to the resource library in Ottawa is in order. Ryan stuffs suitcases with photocopied material and returns home to study the invaluable information and data which others have overlooked.

During the winter of 1996, he had been doing his homework. "I realized quite blatantly there was lots of hardrock potential in the Dawson district which is known for placer gold," said Ryan.

He fortuitously met Joel White, a miner who thrives on adventure and the bush, too. "Joel had the nerve," added Ryan. "And Joel had the money."

White doesn't apologize for wanting good value returned on dollars invested in employees or projects. "It was a tall request I had. I wanted a project we could mine. It needed to be a middle-sized high-grade producer and globally competitive.

"Shawn was confident. We melded a company. No, we're not on the stock exchange. We don't need to be. We just go do it. We went out with our Ski-Doos and pack lunches and staked our claims in March of 1997."

Obviously, the area where they staked was not withdrawn from staking. All the claims were legally recorded by the Dawson mining recorder. And each one was assigned a Grant of Claim number. Canadian United, which holds an extensive portfolio of mineral packages, has applied only for a permit to work on four of the 18 Horn claims.

The miners, who are governed by the federal Yukon Quartz Mining Act, have further certainty about their holdings under provisions in the Tr'ondek Hwech'in final land-claim agreement. In Chapter 10, schedule A, headed Tombstone Territorial Park, Section 3.6 protects the existing quartz claims, even after core and study-area boundaries are established.

A wide array of deposits is associated with the so-called Tombstone Gold Belt. An arc of 92-million-year-old intrusive rocks trend from Dawson City across to Macmillan Pass and into the Northwest Territories.

"Intrusive" is the process of emplacement of magma into pre-existing rock. The belt includes household names such as Brewery Creek and the Tombstone near Dawson as well as Dublin Gulch and Scheelite Dome in the Mayo area.

Some well-known golden neighbors on the Alaskan side are Fort Knox, True North and the Pogo.

The Horn is defined as a skarn (limestone)-type occurrence that almost twins with Noranda's Marn deposit located eight kilometres to the northwest.

The federal geological services stated that extensive sampling of a small pit at the Horn indicates the grade is in the range of 15 grams to 21 grams of gold per tonne of rock.

"Given the high-grade numbers, it seems quite apparent to us, the more we dig, the more we'll fine," said White.

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