Mountain View Tungsten Project

About This Claim

Two Historic Tungsten Sites, Now Held as One Controlled Trend

The Mountain View Tungsten Project is a contiguous group of eight unpatented lode mining claims covering historic scheelite (tungsten) workings on the southeast flank of Churchill Butte, in the Churchill Mining District, Lyon County, Nevada — anchored by the past-producing Ruth Mine and the historic Mountain View Group. Both sites were worked during the World War II tungsten boom of the early 1940s. USGS records catalogue the Ruth as a past producer of scheelite ore averaging roughly 0.4–0.6% WO₃, while the Mountain View Group, 0.83 mile south, is a developed prospect with a shaft and surface-underground workings. Mineralization is a classic contact-metamorphic skarn system — scheelite hosted in silicated limestone and skarn beds near the contact of a Late Cretaceous granodiorite intrusion with metasedimentary rocks.

Before 2026 this was two isolated showings with open ground between them. Six new claims — Mountain View 2 through 7 — were located that year to bridge the gap and hold the projected trace of the intrusive contact running between the two historic workings, so the whole trend now sits in one hand: roughly three quarters of a mile of controlled skarn contact, not two prospect pits.

Churchill Butte sits about thirty miles east of Reno on the US-50 / Alternate 95 corridor — a graded road reaches the workings, Fernley and the Union Pacific mainline are fifteen kilometres southwest, and an assay lab in Reno turns samples around in ten to fourteen days. Most historic tungsten ground in Nevada is a two-hour drive from anywhere on roads that wash out; this one isn't.

The Eight-Claim Block

The package is eight unpatented federal lode claims located under the General Mining Law of 1872. The Ruth claim covers the past-producing adits and mined block on the north end; Mountain View 1 covers the historic shaft and surface-underground workings of the Mountain View Group. Mountain View 2 through 7 were staked in 2026 to bridge the two and hold the projected trace of the granodiorite contact in between.

Note: a maximum-size lode claim is 20.66 acres (1,500 × 600 ft), so eight claims cap out at 165 acres; the block is commonly described in marketing materials as roughly 140 acres of consolidated footprint.

Historic Production — the Ruth Mine & the Mountain View Group

Two USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) records anchor the block. The Ruth is catalogued as a past producer; the Mountain View Group as a developed prospect. Both are tied to the same contact-metamorphic tungsten skarn system on the Churchill Butte intrusion.

Note: the Mountain View Group's mapped host rock at the recorded point is andesite, not carbonate — a detail worth resolving with a hand lens and a UV lamp before committing significant capital. MRDS records document historic exploration and reported occurrences; they are not a certification of ore grade, tonnage, or current claim status.

Geology & Mineralization

Contact-Metamorphic Tungsten Skarn on a Late Cretaceous Granodiorite Margin

The deposit type is USGS model 14a, tungsten skarn: scheelite in calc-silicate metasomatic rock next to a granitic intrusion in a carbonate host. Churchill Butte sits in the northern Basin and Range. The host stratigraphy is older — Triassic to Middle Jurassic marine metasediments (argillaceous limestone, calcareous shale, chert) folded and metamorphosed during the Late Jurassic Luning–Fencemaker event. Those carbonate sequences are the host rock for tungsten skarn across all of western Nevada. Into them, between roughly 80 and 92 million years ago, the Sierra Nevada batholith pushed granodiorite to quartz monzodiorite plutons — reduced, I-type, magnetite-series bodies, the kind the USGS Nevada grade-tonnage study associates with significantly higher-grade tungsten skarns than oxidized intrusions.

The USGS record for the Ruth is specific: scheelite disseminated in skarn and silicated limestone beds 2 to 6 feet thick near the granite contact, with orebodies localized in fracture zones along small-displacement faults cutting the metasedimentary section. Expected skarn mineralogy is a standard calcium exoskarn assemblage — garnet in the grossular–andradite series, pyroxene in the diopside–hedenbergite series, plus wollastonite, epidote, tremolite–actinolite and calcite. Across 113 Nevada tungsten skarn deposits in the USGS grade-tonnage dataset (OFR 94-005), the geometric mean grade is 0.48% WO₃ — indistinguishable from the historic Ruth grade.

Under shortwave ultraviolet light at 254 nm, scheelite glows bright blue-white, and it does so at grades as low as 0.02% WO₃ — two people with a lamp and a dark night can map the mineralized trace of the contact across this whole block for the cost of a lamp and a weekend. Vivid secondary copper — blue-green azurite, chrysocolla and malachite staining — also turns up in outcrop and dump material across the block. It isn't the target commodity, but it says the mineralizing system was bigger than tungsten alone; the district's Old Soldier prospect 2.75 miles northwest carries a molybdenum–gold–silver–copper signature on the same intrusive contact. No assay has been run on any of the copper material — a gap a first-pass sampling program would close.

Exploration Targets

Four conceptual drill targets ring the intrusive contact aureole. These are planning-stage concepts only, subject to ground-truthing by UV mapping, channel sampling, and ground geophysics — no hole has ever been collared on this property.

Note: no mineral resource or reserve has been estimated for this property. A planning-stage exploration target sketched in the full project report runs from ~160,000 tonnes at 0.45% WO₃ (low case) to ~576,000 tonnes at 0.45% WO₃ (base case) — explicitly labeled speculative, with insufficient geological evidence to support a defined mineral resource. See the full project site for the complete Phase 0–2 exploration budget (~$1.07M, 18 months).

Tungsten Market — Why Now

Tungsten has the highest melting point of any industrial metal and is designated a critical mineral by the USGS and a strategic material by the Department of War. China controls roughly 82% of global production, and U.S. primary tungsten mine production has been effectively zero for about a decade. On 4 February 2025, China imposed export licensing controls on tungsten; APT (ammonium paratungstate) exports fell sharply and price followed.

The policy response has moved fast: a March 2025 executive order expedited BLM permitting for critical minerals; tungsten was formally added to the federal Critical Minerals List in November 2025; a January 2026 Section 232 proclamation found the U.S. lacks a secure critical-mineral supply chain; and February 2026 brought Project Vault, a $12B EXIM-backed stockpile that functions as a price floor for domestic producers. Strategic buyers are already transacting on comparable Nevada tungsten skarns — Viking Mines (ASX: VKA) raised roughly A$3.8M to acquire six historic Nevada tungsten projects at a historic grade of 0.54% WO₃, and holds a $191M EXIM letter of interest; Nevada Rand LLC acquired the historic Victory tungsten mine near Gabbs with federal-buyer interest.

Note: price and policy figures above are current as reported on the full project site (market analysis dated May 2026). No tonnage has been defined for this property, so there is nothing yet to multiply a margin by — see the full site for the complete price-history chart, per-tonne economics table, and comparable-transaction detail.

Location & Access

Churchill Butte is a 5,928-foot Basin-and-Range summit east of the Virginia Range, between US-50 and Alternate 95. The claims sit on its southeast flank, in Section 22 of Township 17 North, Range 24 East, Mount Diablo Meridian. Reno is about thirty miles west — roughly forty five minutes — and Silver Springs is eight miles northeast. Fernley, with the Union Pacific mainline and an industrial park, is fifteen kilometres southwest.

Land Status, Fees & Permitting

All eight claims are unpatented federal lode claims on BLM-administered public land, located under the General Mining Law of 1872. The BLM annual maintenance fee is $200 per claim, due September 1 — $1,600 per year for the full eight-claim block if paid in full. Because the block sits under the ten-claim small-miner threshold, the holder can instead file the Small Miner's Waiver (genuinely free, no service charge) and complete $100 of assessment work per claim per year, filing an Affidavit of Assessment Work or Notice of Intent to Hold by December 30.

Note: fee figures verified against current BLM guidance. Records for this claim block can be searched on MLRS (mlrs.blm.gov), which replaced the retired LR2000 system.

Mountain View Tungsten Project — At a Glance

Mountain View Mineral Rights Transfer Process

A mining claim gives the holder the right to mine on mineral-rich land that belongs to the federal government. Mining claims are a tangible asset and show proof of all interests in the minerals in the area. They can be bought, sold, or used as collateral, just like any other piece of real estate.

A mining claim can be sold, traded, leased, gifted, willed, used as collateral, or transferred in part or in its entirety, just like any other real property, using a quitclaim deed, which is a recordable conveyance. Questions about the transfer process can be answered by contacting us anytime. All current fees and paperwork are paid and kept current through the coming assessment year.

Purchasing the “Mountain View Tungsten Project”

• Full mineral rights transfer for all 8 claims — Ruth and Mountain View 1–7.
• Official Certificates of Location, claim location map, and the owner's digitized KMZ boundary file.
• Full field photo set (59 originals from April & July 2023) and the MRDS / NBMG source records.
• Email-based support for claim maintenance and questions.

Need help purchasing this unpatented Nevada mining claim block?

Email us for more information and additional payment options, including owner-financing. For the complete technical report, drill-target renderings, and market analysis, see the full project site ↗.

After your purchase is complete, you'll be asked to fill out our new claim owner form with your name and address. We handle all the filing and transfer services on your behalf, and you'll receive officially stamped, recorded copies of your paperwork from the Lyon County Recorder's Office and the Nevada State Office of the Bureau of Land Management, officiating you as the new claimant.