A West Side mining company is seeking a permit from the U.S. Forest Service to explore for gold at a mining claim located in the Coeur d'Alene River Ranger District, in Shoshone County.

The project site, called Equity in Potosi Placer Test Pit, is in Potosi Gulch in the Trail Creek drainage some 15 miles north of Wallace, Idaho, via Forest Service Roads 456 and 605, says Mindy Vogel, a Forest Service geologist.

The company, Equity Mining LLC, of Bellevue, Wash., holds an unpatented claim there, which means Equity owns the mineral rights to a placer deposit there but would lease the land from the federal government. A placer deposit refers to loose gold and other minerals found in sand and gravel.

The company couldn't be reached for comment.

The Forest Service is reviewing the request and public comments regarding it and hopes to issue a decision within a few months, Vogel says.

The proposed project would create a half acre of surface disturbance. It would have three onsite employees, and the test-pit operation would last up to one year.

Equity is hoping, of course, the test pit will indicate gold might be present on a larger scale there, Vogel says.

"Every miner is hoping to find the big one," she says. "If they can prove where the deposit is, they can try to take the next step to develop and mine the deposit."

A placer claim can cover up to 20 acres, and up to eight separate claims can be combined as a mining association, according to guidelines from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which handles such claims.

For the test project, gravel from the site would be excavated with a front-end loader and transported to nearby private land where a wash plant would use water action to separate gold from lighter minerals, Vogel says.

The washed gravels would be returned to the site and then would be covered with topsoil and woody debris to return the site to a natural state.

The project site, near the historic community of Delta, was placer mined more than a century ago.

"It's a very popular area for mining proposals," Vogel says. "The area historically has been mined over the years and has proven to contain a lot of placer gold deposits."

Vogel says she receives one to seven such proposals a year and is expecting a wave of them this year, in part because metals prices are at historic highs.