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Clifton Mining Co. Summary of Annual General Meeting held on August 26, 2011

ALPINE, UT, Sept. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -

Voting: The directors and auditors were re-elected, without apparent controversy. No other matters had been submitted for voting.

Michael Free Presentation: Professor Free, of the Department of Metallurgy at the University of Utah, gave a talk in which he simply and elegantly explained the function of roasting and/or microwaving on ore, creating microscopic fractures that allow the lixiviant to reach and dissolve the metals. He presented the results of his work on Clifton ore samples that had been microwaved. The results ranged from 0 to more than 5 ounce of gold per ton and from 0 to nearly 50 ounces of silver per ton, with about a quarter of the samples appearing potentially economic.

Of particular interest to Clifton, there were six samples taken from the Kiewit zone, taken from three different depths of two holes. These were analyzed both before and after roasting. The following were the extracted gold results: (Ounces of gold per ton in parenthesis)

Sample Number Before Roasting After Roasting
5KZRC002-180 A 1.64 grams per ton 91.73 grams per ton (3.24)
5KZCR002-180 B 1.37 grams per ton 90.72 grams per ton (3.2)
5KZRC002-180 C 1.30 grams per ton 94.12 grams per ton (3.32)
5KZCR002-160 A 2.34 grams per ton 154.18 grams per ton (5.44)
5KZRC002-160 B 2.06 grams per ton 154.54 grams per ton (5.45)
5KZRC002-160 C 2.28 grams per ton 155.53 grams per ton (5.49)

The primary significance of these results is that the Kiewit zone is very large, with estimates at 10+ million tons. If these samples are representative of the material in that zone, Kiewit could be one of the largest and highest grade gold deposits in the world. Professor Free, aware of the extraordinary nature of his results - while roasting is commonly used in the industry to increase recoveries, it rarely produces such a large increase - took extraordinary care and tested each sample three times. He obtained the same results each time.

Ken Friedman Presentation: Dr. Friedman stressed that the company's strategy has been to trade off both potential reward and time for risk. Clifton's management has been able to obtain more than $8 million dollars in work on the property through joint venture partners. That work has included mapping, sampling and drilling many of the potential deposits on the property, including the discovery and drilling of the Kiewit gold property. We understand that it has taken time, but more importantly, management has been able to position the company to succeed at little cost to shareholders.

Presently, our joint-venture partner, Desert Hawk Mining, who provided the funds for Clifton to repurchase the Dumont interest in the properties, has done some mining at Yellow Hammer and is currently reprocessing the tailings to extract tungsten. We have received minimal royalties from those base metal operations.

Desert Hawk's primary target is the Kiewit Zone, and they have applied for a permit for a heap leach facility at that site. The State Board has issued an intent to permit, which requires a waiting period for comments. If, as we expect, all goes smoothly, Desert Hawk will have the permit before the end of this year. They will then apply to the Bureau of Land Management for a federal permit for a heap leach, hoping to have that by next summer. Consulting geologist, Robert Cameron, has estimated annual production of 10,000 ounces of gold. At a 15% net smelter return for Clifton (the highest in the industry, to the best of our knowledge), that would generate about $2.7 million annually at a gold price of $1,800 per ton.

Of course, if the roasting and/or microwaving continues to prove successful, producing results similar to those obtained by Professor Free, this will become a much larger project.

Addendum:

At his talk at the annual general meeting of Clifton, Ken Friedman briefly discussed the state of the precious metals markets. While he was bullish for the longer term, he was cautious-to-bearish in the shorter term. Typically, precious metals have a 3-4 year cycle, and in the previous three years, there had been no substantial correction. The sharpness of the correction over the past week surprised even him. Gold and the major producers were down 20% in less than a week, junior producers down 25% in that time frame, and silver and silver producers down nearly 30%.

This is ballpark (in magnitude) for a cyclic correction within an ongoing secular bull market. (The time frame of the bear has been compressed, but this is compatible with an ongoing secular bull.) If this is the case, as it appears to be, then the next two years could take precious metals prices considerably higher. Friedman now believes that the worst is behind us, that even if we have not made the lows for this cycle (and for many years), it is not likely that we will go much lower than the lows of September 26.

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