Bedrock Creek Mine, Chistochina Mining District, Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Bedrock Creek Mine	Mine
Chistochina Mining District	Mining District
Southeast Fairbanks Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: This mine is on the south side of Bedrock Creek about one-third mile west of the center of section 35, T. 20 S., R. 16 E., Fairbanks Meridian. The location of the main cut on Bedrock Creek is shown in Moffit (1944). The mine is near locality 27 of Cobb (1979 [OFR 79-238]). Bedrock Creek is lumped with other nearby mines and prospects as locality 68 by MacKevett and Holloway (1977) and is locality 15 in table 3 of Nokleberg and others (1991). The location is accurate.
Geology: Bedrock Creek cuts through a section of bench gravel as much as 75 feet thick into hard bedrock of unknown lithology. During the Pleistocene the creek was a discharge channel for the glacier that fed the major glacier in the valley of the Middle Fork Chistochina River (Moffit, 1944). Placer gold occurs in the bench gravels and is locally concentrated on layers of clay-rich or cemented gravel false bedrock. The cut on Bedrock Creek yielded a nugget that weighed about 0.15 ounce, the largest gold nugget found in the Middle Fork prospect area (Moffit, 1944). The principle heavy minerals found in the placer deposits are, in decreasing order of abundance, magnetite, pyrite, chromite, garnet, galena, and olivine (?).
Workings: Bedrock Creek was prospected in the early days of the district and was included with Limestone (MH309), Kraemer (MH311), and other nearby creeks in a consolidated claim group owned by the Middle Fork Mining Company of Seattle (Moffit, 1944). The properties were explored and developed for production by 1941. Due at least in part to World War II, there was, however, no extensive mining.
Age: Pleistocene.
Reserves: There is a possible low-grade but large gold placer deposit in bench deposits on the west side of the Middle Fork Chistochina River (Moffit, 1944).

Commodities (Major) - Au; (Minor) - Ag, Pb
Development Status: Undetermined.
Deposit Model: Placer Au (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	MH310

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References