Boer Creek Mine, Nome Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Boer Creek Mine	Mine
Nome Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Boer Creek is a south tributary of the Hudson River, a headwater tributary of Nome River. The mine is about 1.25 miles west-southwest of where Dickens Creek crosses the Nome-Taylor road. The mine is in Boer Creek at an approximate elevation of 850 feet. The location is accurate within about 1,000 feet. Boer Creek is locality 81 of Cobb (1972 [MF 468], 1978 [OFR 78-93]).
Geology: Placer gold mining took place on Boer Creek in 1901-02 when about 135 ounces of gold were produced (Collier and others, 1908). The recovered gold was of two types: one valued at about 16 dollars per ounce and one valued at 18 dollars per ounce (gold at 20.67dollars per ounce). The paystreak was narrow and nearly confined to the creek bed; gravel in the creek was from 18 inches to 8 feet thick. The upper part of the creek contained a iron-cemented ferricrete gravel which also contained placer gold. When the placer was visited by Moffit in 1905-06, it was producing gold from a small hydraulic plant operated on a residual placer on weathered graphitic schist, which Moffit believed furnished all or most of the placer gold (Moffit, 1913, p. 76, 100). Boer Creek is underlain by the graphitic, calcareous schist unit of Hummel (1962 [MF 248]) that consists predominantly of slightly graphitic, calcareous quartz schist. Regional mapping suggests that these schists have been upgraded to lower amphibolite facies and are biotite-bearing (Sainsbury, Hummel, and Hudson, 1972; Bundzten and others, 1994). According to Collier and others (1908, p. 182), the bedrock at the mine was a chloritic schist cut by numerous glassy quartz veins. The bedrock could be part of the Nome Group derived from Precambrian to early Paleozoic protoliths (Till and Dumoulin, 1994). The Nome Group underwent regional blueschist facies metamorphism in the Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous (Sainsbury, Coleman, and Kachadoorian, 1970; Forbes and others, 1984; Thurston, 1985; Armstrong and others, 1986; Hannula and McWilliams, 1995). The blueschist facies rocks were recrystallized to greenschist facies or higher metamorphic grades in conjunction with regional extension, crustal melting, and magmatism in the mid-Cretaceous (Hudson and Arth, 1983; Miller and Hudson, 1991; Miller and others, 1992; Dumitru and others, 1995; Hannula and others, 1995; Hudson, 1994; Amato and others, 1994; Amato and Wright, 1997, 1998). Lode gold mineralization on Seward Peninsula is mostly related to the higher temperature metamorphism in the mid-Cretaceous (Apodoca, 1994; Ford, 1993 [thesis]; Ford and Snee, 1996; Goldfarb and others, 1997).
Workings: The deposit was mined on a small scale in 1901 and 1902 when it produced about 135 ounces of gold of 770 and 870 fineness. It was shut down in 1903 pending the completion of the Campion Ditch, but it was again operated as a small hydraulic mine in 1906. It has been inactive for many years.
Age: Quaternary.
Production: About 135 ounces of gold of 770 and 870 fineness were produced in 1901-02 (Collier and others, 1908).

Commodities (Major) - Au
Development Status: Yes; small
Deposit Model: Placer Au (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	NM049

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References