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The Lakeview mill site is located about one mile northwest of the City of Lakeview in Lake County, Oregon, and immediately west of U.S. 395. It is in a broad valley north of Goose Lake.
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Uranium deposits were discovered in south-central Oregon in the mid 1950s within the Basin and Range geological province. The deposits appear to be remnants of what possibly were once more extensive mineralized zones in essentially flat-lying host rock strata. The deposits possibly were formed by low temperature/low pressure hydrothermal action in an intensely altered tuffaceous host rock capped by a nonporous clay layer. The host rock occurs in a thick sequence of pyroclastic rocks, volcanic sediments, and lake-bed sediments interspersed with andesitic volcanic flows of Pliocene-age. Individual ore deposits are up to 150 feet in thickness, and ore was explored to a depth of 600 feet below the surface. Shallow ore consists principally of secondary uranium minerals and the deeper ore of coffinite associated with base-metal sulfide minerals. Steeply dipping and cross-cutting normal faults have cut the ore-bearing Pliocene sequence into large blocks that are displaced and tilted.
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