Saskatchewan
Under Saskatchewan
Companies exploring for minerals in Saskatchewan file their drilling results with the province. Once those reports are public, the Saskatchewan Geological Survey adds the holes to one compilation, which began as a record of uranium drilling and now covers metals, industrial minerals and glacial sediments too.
That gives {holes} drill holes you can see here, most of them diamond-drilled for core. Each one was drilled by an earlier explorer, and many of the companies named in the records no longer exist. This tour flies you through the places behind them, then hands you the controls.
1940s to today
Seventy years of looking
Watch the holes arrive year by year. The early ones cluster near Flin Flon and along the north shore of Lake Athabasca. Drilling took off with the uranium rush of the 1970s and 1980s, when about 9,000 of these holes went down, then eased off ({d1990} in the 1990s) before a second boom: {d2000} holes in the 2000s and {d2010} in the 2010s.
The 2020s look quiet ({d2020} so far) mainly because recent holes are still confidential. Another {d0} holes have no usable date, so they only show when the year filter is open.
Uranium
The Athabasca Basin
Colour the holes by target and the north lights up. Most of the province's drilling has chased uranium in and around the Athabasca Basin, a thick lid of sandstone laid over much older rock. The richest ore sits where the sandstone meets the basement below, often hundreds of metres down.
That is why the holes here are deep and come in tight clusters along buried graphite-rich faults. The densest columns trace the eastern edge of the basin, from Key Lake north to Wollaston Lake.
1950s
Uranium City
The first uranium boom was north of the lake. The federal Crown company Eldorado Mining and Refining developed the Beaverlodge area, and in 1952 the province decided to build a town to serve the mines. By 1981 Uranium City had about 2,500 people.
When the mines closed in 1982 most residents left. The holes here are mostly a much later round of drilling, in 2007 and 2008, around the old Beaverlodge workings. {site}
West side
Cluff Lake and Shea Creek
Cluff Lake, found in the 1960s on the western side of the basin, was mined from 1981 until its ore ran out in 2002, and the site is now under the province's institutional control programme.
A short way south, Shea Creek was drilled deep in the 1990s and 2000s by Cogema and its successor AREVA. Its 450 or so holes add up to more metres than any other site in this tour. {site}
1968
Rabbit Lake and Collins Bay
The modern Athabasca story starts on the east side. Rabbit Lake was discovered in 1968 and began production as an open pit in 1975. Nearby the Collins Bay zones and the Eagle Point deposit followed, and Eagle Point was mined underground from 1994 until production was suspended in 2016.
The holes here carry the names of Gulf Minerals and Eldorado, the explorers of the 1970s and 1980s. {site}
Wollaston Lake
McClean Lake, Midwest and Dawn Lake
West of Rabbit Lake is the most densely drilled ground in the province. The McClean ore body was found in 1979 and JEB in 1982, and open-pit mining began in 1999. Next door, Dawn Lake was drilled more than a thousand times, mostly by Asamera in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Midwest, a few kilometres further west, is still waiting to be mined, and its newer holes from the 2000s sit among the old ones. {site}
1975
Key Lake
At the south-east edge of the basin, a joint venture led by Uranerz discovered the Gaertner ore body in 1975, and Deilmann followed. Gaertner was mined from 1983 to 1987 and Deilmann from 1989 to 1997.
The Key Lake mill went on to process ore trucked from McArthur River. The holes cluster tightly around the two old pits. {site}
1981
Cigar Lake
In 1981 a reconnaissance hole, WQS2-15, found the Cigar Lake deposit. It is one of the richest uranium deposits in the world, with reserves averaging about 16 per cent uranium oxide.
Wet, weak ground made it hard to mine, and ore production only began in March 2014, more than thirty years after discovery. Many of the holes here were drilled by AREVA, now Orano, during that long wait. {site}
1988
McArthur River
In 1988 hole MAC-195, drilled about 580 metres deep, found the P2 North zone at McArthur River. It is the world's largest high-grade uranium deposit, and production began in 1999.
You can find MAC-195 among the holes here. The ore lies more than 500 metres down, so the deposit is mined underground and its open-file holes run deep. {site}
2008
Phoenix and Millennium
The deep south-east of the basin kept giving. In 2008 Denison's hole WR-249 at Wheeler River cut uranium at Phoenix, and the next year WR-273 cut 6 metres grading 62.6 per cent uranium oxide.
Phoenix is now planned as an in-situ recovery mine, where the uranium is dissolved underground and pumped out. To the west, Cameco's Millennium deposit sits more than 600 metres down. {site}
2012 to 2014
Patterson Lake: the new frontier
For decades the south-western basin looked empty. Then in 2012 hole PLS12-022 found the Triple R deposit at Patterson Lake South, and in 2014 NexGen's hole RK-14-21 found Arrow a few kilometres away.
Arrow has been drilled more than 500 times since, and its 340,000 or so metres of open-file core are the most at any site in this tour after Shea Creek. Both projects are being prepared for mining. {site}
South of the basin
Copper, zinc and gold in the shield
South of the Athabasca, the shield holds base metals and gold. Near Flin Flon, a Hudson Bay Exploration and Development ground survey found the Flexar conductor in 1951, and a small mine worked it from 1969 to 1972. West of there, a 1988 drilling programme found the McIlvenna Bay zinc-copper deposit at Hanson Lake.
Further north-west the Seabee gold mill has run since 1991, and today its ore comes from the Santoy mine. Switch the target colour to copper or gold to see these belts. {site}
How to read this data
What the dots are, and what they are not
Each dot is a drill collar from the Saskatchewan Geological Survey compilation, drawn with its published dip, direction and length. The compilation has no assays. Where the explorer did not name a target, we show uranium for holes logged through the base of the Athabasca sandstone and otherwise the commodity of the nearest deposit in the Saskatchewan Mineral Deposit Index, within 2 km.
The holes belong to the explorers that drilled them, and the company names are as filed, sometimes under names that have since changed. Contains information licensed under the Government of Saskatchewan Standard Unrestricted Use Data Licence (Version 2.0).
