Copper King Prospect, Nome Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Copper King Prospect	Prospect
Nome Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: The Copper King prospect is on the northwest flank of hill 1610, which lies between Copper Creek and Dickens Creek. The prospect is at an elevation of about 1,100 feet, 0.75 mile south of the Nome-Taylor road near the divide between the Nome River and Salmon Lake drainages. The prospect is located within about 500 feet. It is locality 6 of Hummel (1962 [MF 248]) and included with other nearby prospects in locality 16 of Cobb (1972 [MF-463], 1978 [OFR 78-93]).
Geology: Hummel (1962 [MF 248]) noted the presence of copper and lead minerals here. On the basis of descriptions of copper mineralization in the general area (Smith, 1908; Cathcart, 1922), the mineralization is likely to include azurite, malachite, bornite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, and possibly galena in silica-rich rocks near a marble-schist contact. Early workers noted that the mineralization was stratabound but interpreted it to be in silicified zones and to have a replacement origin. Picked samples (probably from the Copper Mountain prospect, NM054, 0.6 mile to the south) contained 15 percent copper, 20 percent lead, and 'rather high silver and low gold content' (Smith, 1908, p. 240-242). This prospect appears to have similarities to several other copper-bearing deposits in the eastern Teller quadrangle (for example, the Ward mine, Hudson, 1998, TE071) and in the western Solomon quadrangle (for example, the Wheeler mine, Hudson, 1999, SO172). The Copper King prospect occurs in graphitic calc-mica schist with interlayered marble; the schist includes concordant bodies of granitic orthogneiss; one of the orthogneiss bodies occurs below the Copper King prospect (Hummel, 1962, MF-248; Thurston, 1985, figure 3A). Cathcart (1922, p. 219) described the orthogneiss as mainly fine grained, but with local porphyritic facies. An orthogneiss body 4.5 miles to the northeast has been determined to have a 678 Ma protolith age (Amato and Wright, 1998). The metamorphic rocks are part of the Nome Group and 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). The age of nearly stratabound copper occurrences is more enigmatic, with a range of ages from that of the protolith through the late Proterozoic emplacement of some orthogneiss to the mid-Cretaceous.
Workings: There is a short adit and shallow shaft on the property. The earliest workings were before 1908 (Smith, 1908). There has been little recent work.
Age: Late Proterozoic, early Paleozoic, or mid-Cretaceous.
Alteration: Bleaching, development of silica-rich rock, introduction of white mica, and oxidation.

Commodities (Major) - Cu, Pb; (Minor) - Ag, Au
Development Status: None
Deposit Model: Carbonate-hosted, sulfide-bearing silica-rich rock.

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	NM051

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References