Cascade Prospect, Juneau Mining District, Juneau, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Cascade Prospect	Prospect
Juneau Mining District	Mining District
Juneau	City Borough
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: The Cascade prospect is at an elevation of approximately 2,000 feet, on the southeast side of Yankee Basin. It is in the SW1/4NE1/4 section 14, T. 38 S., R. 64 E. of the Copper River Meridian; the site is marked by mine and prospect symbols on the Juneau C-3 topographic map. The location is accurate.
Geology: The host rocks at the Cascade prospect are northwest-trending, intercalated black phyllite, graphitic schist and felsic phyllite (Knopf, 1912). The deposit consists of continuous quartz lenses and quartz stringer lodes up to 6 feet thick in black phyllite. The quartz contains arsenopyrite, galena, pyrite, and sphalerite. This prospect, together with the Noonday (JU090), Julia (JU083), and Puzzler (JU089) prospects are sometimes collectively referred to as the Julia group. The deposits were discovered before 1904. The Cascade prospect was developed by a 90-foot inclined shaft and several trenches. The prospect area was drilled by Placid Oil in the early 1980's and by Houston Oil and Minerals in 1985. U.S. Bureau of Mines samples contained up to 4.3 ppm gold and 4.4 ppm silver (Redman and others, 1989). This prospect is in the Juneau Gold Belt, which consists of more than 200 gold-quartz-vein deposits that have produced nearly 7 million ounces of gold. These gold-bearing mesothermal quartz vein systems form a zone 160 km long by 5 to 8 km wide along the western margin of the Coast Mountains. The vein systems are in or near shear zones adjacent to west-verging, mid-Cretaceous thrust faults. The veins are hosted by diverse, variably metamorphosed, sedimentary, volcanic, and intrusive rocks. From the Coast Mountains batholith westward, the host rocks include mixed metasedimentary and metavolcanic sequences of Carboniferous and older, Permian and Triassic, and Jurassic-Cretaceous age. The sequences are juxtaposed along mid-Cretaceous thrust faults (Miller and others, 1994). The sequences are intruded by mid-Cretaceous to middle Eocene plutons, mainly diorite, tonalite, granodiorite, quartz monzonite, and granite. Sheetlike tonalite plutons emplaced just east of the Juneau Gold Belt and undeformed granite and granodiorite bodies that are emplaced farther to the east are between 55 and 48 Ma (Gehrels and others, 1991). The structural grain of the belt is defined by northwest-striking, moderately to steeply northeast-dipping, penetrative foliation that developed between Cretaceous and Eocene time (Miller and others, 1994). The majority of the veins in the Juneau Gold Belt strike northwest. Isotopic dates indicate that the auriferous veins in the Juneau Gold Belt formed between 56 and 55 Ma (Miller and others, 1994; Goldfarb and others, 1997).
Workings: This prospect, together with the Noonday (JU090), Julia (JU083) and Puzzler (JU089) prospects are sometimes collectively referred to as the Julia group. The deposits were discovered prior to 1904. The Cascade prospect was developed by a 90-foot inclined shaft and several trenches. The prospect area was drilled by Placid Oil in the early 1980's and by Houston Oil and Minerals in 1985. U.S. Bureau of Mines samples contained up to 4.3 ppm gold and 4.4 ppm silver (Redman and others, 1989).
Age: Isotopic dates indicate that the auriferous veins in the Juneau Gold Belt formed between 56 and 55 Ma (Miller and others, 1994; Goldfarb and others, 1997).

Commodities (Major) - Ag, Au; (Minor) - Pb, Zn
Development Status: None
Deposit Model: Low-sulfide Au-quartz vein (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 36a)

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	JU088

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References