From June to September 2017, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) collected a total of 116 surficial sediment and bedrock samples from abandoned mine wastepiles, ephemeral channels below wastepiles, nearby outcrops, and background areas representative of the undisturbed lithology on the western slope of the northern half of the Oquirrh Mountain Range, approximately 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. The sample locations can be spatially clustered into four groups: the Bates Canyon group in the foothills below Bates Canyon; the Middle Canyon group in Middle Canyon; the Ridgeline group within the Bingham Mining District located at or near the Tooele-Salt Lake County border on the Oquirrh Mountain ridge; and the Stockton group within the historic Stockton Mining District (also known as the Rush Valley Mining District). Mining operations within the study area began in the mid-1860s and primarily targeted copper, gold, iron, lead and zinc deposits in the Pennsylvanian-Permian Oquirrh Group (Krahulec, 2018).
Geochemical analyses were completed through a third-party contract by AGAT Laboratories. Samples were analyzed for 49 major, minor, and trace elements using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) methods (Ag, Al, As, Ba, Be, Bi, Ca, Cd, Ce, Co, Cr, Cs, Cu, Fe, Ga, Hf, In, K, La, Li, Lu, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Nb, Ni, P, Pb, Rb, S, Sb, Sc, Se, Sn, Sr, Ta, Tb, Te, Th, Ti, Tl, U, V, W, Y, Yb, Zn, Zr).