Dime Creek; Haycock; Dime Creek Dredging Co.; Dime Creek Mining Co.; Haycock Mining Co.; Moon and Ryan; Smith Mine, Koyuk Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Dime Creek; Haycock; Dime Creek Dredging Co.; Dime Creek Mining Co.; Haycock Mining Co.; Moon and Ryan; Smith Mine	Mine
Koyuk Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: The Dime Creek gold placer is just east of the village of Haycock. It is in section 20, T. 3 S., R. 12 W., of the Kateel River Meridian. At various times, this site has been referred to as Haycock, Dime Creek Dredging Company, Dime Creek Mining Company, Haycock Mining Company, Moon and Ryan, and Smith according to Cobb, (1972, location 45).
Geology: Dime Creek flows near a fault (?) contact between Paleozoic metamorphosed limestone and Jurassic-Cretaceous andesite flows. The flows are intruded by small, mafic and ultramafic plutons. At this old placer mine, the gold is mainly on metamorphosed andesite bedrock; some gold also is in the overlying 2 to 3 feet of gravel. In the stream bed the paystreak is well defined, while on the benches there are several, linear concentrations of gold. These bench concentrations were thought to be caused by wave action. Assays of gold from Dime Creek returned as high as 961 parts gold and 32 parts silver. The placers also contained platinum in approximate ratio to gold of 1:200. Analysis of platinum-group minerals from concentrate gave the following results: 88.8 percent platinum, I4.7 percent iridium, 4.3 percent osmium and iridium, 1.1 percent rhenium, and 1.1 percent palladium (Mertie, 1969). The placer deposits in the upper portion of the creek produced almost twice as much platinum as the lower claims. On both creek and bench claims the overburden thickness ranges from 10 to 30 feet; all of the ground was frozen. Heavy minerals in the concentrate from a second tier bench claim include iron-oxides, abundant chrome spinel, olivine, pyroxene, rare garnet, and rutile (Harrington, 1919). Linux Gold Corp. located 12 mining claims on Dime Creek in March 2005, and initiated surface geology studies and sampling in August 2005. Linux (2007, Results) collected samples at 6 sites and analyzed them for gold and platinum-group metals with encouraging results.
Workings: The Dime Creek placers were mined intermittently from 1915 through at least the early 1990's. The deposits were worked mostly by drift and open-cut mining. A small dredge operated from 1931 to 1940. Linux Gold Corp. located (2007, Results) 12 mining claims on Dime Creek in March 2005, and initiated surface geology studies and sampling in August 2005. In 2006, Linux collected samples at 6 sites and analyzed them for gold and platinum-group metals with encouraging results.
Age: Quaternary.
Production: On the lower end of Dime Creek, one ounce of platinum was produced for every 250 ounces of gold. On the upper claims there may have been as much as one ounce of platinum produced for every per 100 ounces of gold. A total of 35 ounces of platinum was recovered from placers at Dime Creek in 1917 (Harrington, 1919). Most of the 56 ounces of platinum reported from the Seward Peninsula in 1918 came from Dime Creek (Cathcart, 1920). Brooks and Martin (1921) report 32 ounces of platinum from the Dime Creek area. Linus Gold Corporation (2007, Results) reported that the total production was about 40,000 ounces of gold and 250 ounces of platinum-group metals.

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

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Link to USGS - Alaska:	CA002

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References