Lahontan Gold Corp. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with a wholly-owned subsidiary of Emergent Metals Corp. to acquire the advanced West Santa Fe gold-silver exploration project ("West Santa Fe; also known as Mindora), located only 15 km West of Lahontan's asset, the Santa Fe Mine, in Nevada's prolific Walker Lane.

West Santa Fe hosts an oxidized gold-silver mineralized system in a geologic setting similar to Santa Fe. Previous exploration drilling at West Santa Fe targets over 13,000 metres in 171 drill holes; only five holes are deeper than 165 metres. Preliminary modeling of drill hole data by Lahontan geologists outlines a shallow gold and silver system with a sufficient volume to host 0.5 to 1.0M ounces of oxidized gold and silver mineralization in an open-pit mining configuration.

The Agreement requires Lahontan to make payments totaling USD 1.8 million over a seven-year period to Emergent, back-end loaded, to exercise an option to acquire a 100% interest in West Santa Fe. The option payments can be made in a combination of cash and shares at Lahontan's discretion. In addition, the Company will commit to exploration expenditures totaling USD 1.4 million over the same seven-year period, these expenditures should be sufficient to define an initial mineral resource estimate for West Santa Fe.

The Agreement is subject to the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange which is expected shortly. Lahontan recently announced that it has acquired an additional 794 hectares of mineral rights by staking 95 unpatented lode mining claims at West Santa Fe; the Project now covers a of total 19.7 km2. The Lahontan geologic team studied the data that was acquired when optioning the West Santa Fe Project and concluded that there is potential for significant resource expansion outside the previously existing claim group.

The new unpatented mining claims also cover areas that could be used for potential future mining infrastructure such as heap-leach pads and waste rock dumps. During its due diligence program at West Santa Fe, the Company completed a rock-chip sampling program which produced up to 13.54 g/t Au Eq, ranging from 0.13 g/t to 13. 54 g/t Au Eq and averaged 7.30 g/t Au Eq.

Lahontan geologists also completed detailed statistical analysis of historic soil geochemical data from West Santa Fe, the results show a remarkable correlation with known mineralized areas and outline multiple targets for further exploration.