Glacier Creek Mine, Fairhaven Mining District, Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Glacier Creek Mine	Mine
Fairhaven Mining District	Mining District
Northwest Arctic Borough	Borough
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Glacier Creek is a northeast-flowing stream on the east side of Monument Mountain. At least 4,000 feet of the creek has been placer mined. The center of this mined area is 11,200 feet southeast of the summit of Monument Mountain and 30,000 feet northeast of the summit of Kiwalik Mountain. The locality is about 1.3 miles upstream of the beginning of the Candle ditch. This is locality 60 of Cobb (1972; MF 417; 1975; OFR 75-429).
Geology: Placer gold was discovered in 1908 (Henshaw, 1909). Two men reportedly produced $400 (20 ounces) in 7 hours of mining from a 20 foot-wide paysteak in thin gravels. Apparently gold values have been found from the Candle ditch intake upstream for 1.5 miles but the mapped extent of placer workings start about a mile above the ditch. There are at least 4,000 feet of placer workings along the floodplain of the creek. Monument Mountain is underlain by a polydeformed metapelitic schist that may be Precambrian in age but the bedrock of Glacier Creek is a metasedimentary sequence of Lower Paleozoic age (Till and others, 1986). The Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks locally include felsic metavolcanic rocks in areas peripheral to Kiwalik Mountain. Float of very fine-grained, siliceous, tan-weathering metasediment (tuff or exhalite ?) has been observed in the headwater gravels of Glacier Creek (T. L. Hudson, unpublished data, 1982).
Workings: Surface, open-cut placer workings are present along at least 4,000 feet of the channel and floodplain of the creek.
Age: Quaternary

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

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	BN078

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References