Copper Creek Prospect (lode); Wolverine Copper, Circle Mining District, Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Copper Creek Prospect (lode); Wolverine Copper	- not defined -
Circle Mining District	Mining District
Southeast Fairbanks Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: The Copper Creek prospect is on the north bank of Copper Creek about 47 miles east of its mouth on the Charley River. The coordinates are the location of the adit, in section 4, T. 1 S., R. 22 E., of the Fairbanks Meridian. The location is accurate within 1,000 feet. Anderson (1946) referred to the Copper Creek prospect as the Wolverine Copper prospect. The Copper Creek prospect is located within Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. The Copper Creek prospect is locality 1 of Cobb (1972 [MF-393]) and locality 18 of Eberlein and others (1977).
Geology: The Copper Creek prospect is a skarn in limestone that is surrounded by fine-grained sedimentary rocks (Anderson, 1946). The prospect is in limestone and amphibolite that are interpreted to be a roof pendant several square miles in area on the margin of the Charley River batholith of Tertiary to Mesozoic age (Wedow and others, 1954; Foster, 1976). The Copper Creek prospect is a 4- to 5-foot-wide, vertically dipping mineralized zone exposed in the face of a steep cliff (Saunders, 1955). The gangue and ore minerals in the Copper Creek prospect consists of garnet, calcite, bornite, chalcopyrite, quartz, pyrrhotite, amphibole or pyroxene, galena, and scheelite, as well as secondary minerals that include covellite, malachite, and azurite (Anderson, 1946; Wedow and others, 1954). Trace gold, silver, and tungsten are reported in assays. Most of the sulfides are in calc-silicate rocks near the contact with the amphibolite (Wedow and others, 1954). Two samples from the Copper Creek prospect contain 0.80 to 1.16 ounces of silver per ton, 2.5 to 5.26 percent copper, 0.3 percent zinc; one sample contains trace gold,and the other sample contains as much as 5 percent bismuth (Saunders, 1955). The portal of the adit is located 10 to 15 feet above Copper Creek; it extends 114 feet. Mineralization is present only in the first 40 feet (Wedow and others, 1954). Minor radioactivity is associated with the copper mineralization; the uranium? may occur in bornite and malachite inclusions in wollastonite skarn (Wedow and others, 1954). Placer concentrates taken about 100 feet upstream of the Copper Creek prospect are slightly radioactive and contain thorium and trace monazite. The Copper Creek prospect was staked and an adit was driven in about 1903 (Anderson, 1946). The Copper Creek prospect was examined by the Alaska Territorial Department of Mines in 1946 (Anderson, 1946) and 1955 (Saunders, 1955) and by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1949 during a regional reconnaissance for radioactive deposits (Wedow and others, 1954). The portal of the adit was caved in 1955 (Saunders, 1955).
Workings: The Copper Creek prospect was staked and an adit was driven in about 1903 (Anderson, 1946). The Copper Creek prospect was examined by the Alaska Territorial Department of Mines in 1946 (Anderson, 1946) and 1955 (Saunders, 1955) and by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1949 during a regional reconnaissance for radioactive deposits (Wedow and others, 1954). The portal of the adit was caved in 1955 (Saunders, 1955).
Age: The prospect is in skarn associated with Tertiary or Mesozoic intrusive rocks.

Commodities (Major) - Cu; (Minor) - Ag, Au, Bi, Pb, U?, W
Development Status: None
Deposit Model: Cu skarn? (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 18b).

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	EA002

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References