Geological Survey Bulletin 1229 Geology of the Circle Cliffs Area, Garfield and Kane Counties, Utah

MANGANESE

Some nodules of black manganese minerals lie on the uppermost beds of the Navajo Sandstone in the eastern and southeastern parts of the area. None of this material was seen bedded in the sandstone, but a deposit of such material in Harris Wash about 1 mile southeast of the mapped area has been prospected. Possibly a few small bedded or vein deposits, similar to those described by Baker, Duncan, and Hunt (1952), occur near the Navajo-Carmel contact in the Circle Cliffs area. A small deposit near the middle of sec. 36, T. 32 S., R. 7 E., consists of crosscutting veinlets of manganese oxides near the middle of the Navajo Sandstone; the deposit does not contain recoverable ore (Baker, Duncan, and Hunt, 1952, p. 142-143).

SELENIUM

A grab sample of carnotite ore collected at the Dream prospect contained 0.53 percent uranium and 0.2 percent selenium. Channel samples collected from exposures in the inclined shaft at the prospect contained from 15 to 625 ppm selenium. No other prospects in the Salt Wash Sandstone Member of the Morrison Formation showed so high a concentration of selenium, but no effort was made to systematically sample the Salt Wash for selenium. Selenium may occur in commercial quantities in the Salt Wash in the mapped area, but it probably would have to be recovered as a byproduct of uranium.

TITANIUM

Deposits of heavy minerals containing titanium (ilmenite and leucoxene) and unusual amounts of rare earths have been located a few tens of miles southwest of the Circle Cliffs area in the Straight Cliffs Formation of the Kaiparowits region. The deposits may be beach deposits that coincide with shorelines of Cretaceous seas. Some black sandstone beds that contain moderate amounts of heavy minerals are in the Ferron and Emery Sandstone Members of the Mancos Shale in the Henry Mountain basin, but none appear to have commercial significance.