Divide Creek Prospect, Nome Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Divide Creek Prospect	Prospect
Nome Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Divide Creek is a short, west tributary to upper Nome River. Its headwaters are at the divide between the Nome River and Stewart River drainages. Divide Creek enters Nome River about 2 miles south of the confluence of Hudson Creek and Nome River. This location is just downslope of where the Campion Ditch crosses Divide Creek. It is locality 104 of Cobb (1972 [MF 463], 1978 [OFR 78-93]).
Geology: Divide Creek is a small creek that heads in the divide between the Stewart River and Nome River drainages. Some sluicing of placer gold took place here in 1903 (Collier and others, 1908). Parts of the creek flow over deep gravel deposits of glacial origin (Collier and others, 1908). Nearby glacial and fluvio-glacial deposits are part of the modified drift of the Nome River glaciation and the modified drift of the Stewart River glaciation (Bundtzen and others, 1994). During construction of the Campion Ditch, quartz with attached gold was found near here; one quartz fragment with gold weighed 0.75 pound (Moffit, 1913). Moffit (1913) thought the placer gold was derived from near Boer Mountain; recent hardrock exploration has found significant lode gold deposits nearby, for example at the Divide prospect (NM058). Some of the gold at Divide Creek could also been derived by reworking of weakly auriferous glacial drift of the Nome River and Stewart River glaciations. Bedrock is not exposed in Divide Creek, but nearby it appears to be graphitic and calcareous quartz schist (Hummel, 1962 [MF 248]). This schist may be lower grade than most of the metamorphic rocks immediately to the north on Boer Mountain. (Projections from mapping to the west suggest that the western rocks could be biotite-bearing [Sainsbury, Hummel, and Hudson, 1972; Bundzten and others, 1994]). The bedrock is probably part of the Nome Group derived from Proterozoic 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). The ultimate source of the placer deposits at Divide Creek are lode gold deposits related to the higher temperature metamorphism in the mid-Cretaceous (Apodoca, 1994; Ford, 1993 (thesis); Ford and Snee, 1996; Goldfarb and others, 1997).
Workings: Collier and others (1908) noted some mining in 1903 and plans, probably not carried out, for hydraulic mining. Moffit (1913, p. 100) found no evidence of extensive mining when he visited the area, but did note that the placer gold could have come from the south slopes of Boer Mountain.
Age: Quaternary.

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

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	NM057

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References