Lion Rock Resources Inc. (TSX-V: ROAR, OTCQB: LRRIF) announced Monday it has commenced its inaugural, fully-funded drill program at the Volney Project, targeting a multi-commodity system of gold, lithium, and tin in the historic Black Hills of South Dakota.
The news comes amid a major consolidation in the North American mining sector. On Monday, Coeur Mining, which operates the nearby Wharf gold mine in the Black Hills, announced a $7 billion all-stock acquisition of New Gold. This M&A activity by a key regional producer highlights a strategic race to secure and expand high-quality, long-life assets in politically stable, mining-friendly jurisdictions.
Lion Rock’s project is located in the shadow of one of the world's most prolific gold mines: the Homestake. Acquired by George Hearst in 1877 for $70,000, the Homestake Mine produced over 40 million ounces of gold, built the Hearst family fortune, and ran for 125 years before its 2001 closure.
Today, the mine has been repurposed into the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), a world-leading center for particle physics. But for geologists, its legacy leaves a critical question.
Lion Rock’s exploration thesis, led by Chief Geologist Dr. Jeff Hrncir, is that the Homestake is not an anomaly but the center of a much larger system, and that its the "missing halo" of satellite deposits is waiting to be found.
"So these big Precambrian, what we call origin gold deposits, they always form in clusters," said Dr. Hrncir in a recent Kitco News documentary. "When you think about the world's great origin camps, you think of like Abitibi in Ontario, Quebec... or Eastern gold fields in Western Australia... Currently the Black Hills are missing this halo". The Abitibi belt alone, for context, has produced over 170 million ounces of gold.
The "Two-for-One" Asset
The company's drill program is testing a "two-for-one" thesis, targeting high-grade gold with a lithium-tin system layered directly into the same project.
1. The Gold Target: The program will first test the "Rusty Shaft shear corridor." While the property has seen little to no modern exploration - with historic drilling barely exceeding 50 meters in depth - old workings tell a different story. According to company presentations, historic underground data from the Rusty Shaft reported 61.0 meters at 5.15 g/t Au. Recent surface sampling by Lion Rock’s team has confirmed the potential, returning chip samples up to 14.0 g/t Au and high-grade float samples up to 189.5 g/t Au.
2. The "Economic Accelerator": Beneath the gold target sits a large LCT (Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum) pegmatite swarm. This adds a critical minerals component that the company sees as a potential "economic accelerant."
A May 2025 sampling program confirmed exceptionally high-grade lithium, with results up to 5.3% Li2O from stockpile material and 3.7% Li2O in pegmatite outcrops. "You know, in a world where 1%, 1.5% is kind of the economic grade everybody's looking for," Dr. Hrncir noted, "we've come here on surface and there's average grades of three to 4%".
This is strategically significant as the U.S. currently has only one major producing lithium operation, Albemarle's brine mine in Nevada, and is heavily reliant on imports. The project also has known tin potential, with recent assays of 13 stockpile samples returning values above 1.0% Sn.
"It's exciting for us to be able to drill this gold target, but to have multi commodity, high grade potential on the same property, and often we can target them in the same drill holes even," Dr. Hrncir said.
The "Unfair Advantage"
For investors, the company is highlighting two key "de-risking" factors: land and leadership.
The entire 142-hectare project is on private land. This allows Lion Rock to bypass the lengthy and complex federal permitting process, dealing directly with South Dakota's Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR). The state has already approved a permit area covering 78 drill platforms, giving the team, as Dr. Hrncir stated, the "flexibility to just move 50 meters away to the next platform and keep following the mineralization".
The project is also a personal, 10-year quest for Dr. Hrncir, a South Dakota native who did his PhD on these very rocks.
"It's been building this for me for 10 years," Dr. Hrncir said. "So to finally see a drill parked on site at Tinton, it's gonna be a real game changing moment for me".
To see the full, on-site story and explore the historic Tinton district with Dr. Hrncir, watch the Kitco Mining documentary ‘The Missing Halo: Searching for Gold and Lithium in the Black Hills.’
Disclaimer: This article is sponsored content. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author and guest, and not necessarily to Kitco News. The article and documentary were produced in partnership with Lion Rock Resources, which paid for the production and travel.
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