Kiwalik Flats; Keewalik Flats Mine, Fairhaven Mining District, Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Kiwalik Flats; Keewalik Flats Mine	Mine
Fairhaven Mining District	Mining District
Northwest Arctic Borough	Borough
Alaska	State
USA	Country

River gradient under 25 feet per mile.
Location: The Kiwalik Flats placer mine is on the east bank of the Kiwalik River, about a half-mile northeast of Candle. The coordinates are for the approximate center of the area of mine tailings shown on the Candle D-6 map. The map site is in section 18, T. 6 N., R. 15 W., of the Kateel River Meridian. Cobb, 1972 (MF-389), location 19.
Geology: Placer gold occurs in river gravels in buried paleo-channels of the Kiwalik River at the confluence of Candle Creek. The deposit is overlain by an average of 16 feet (range from 0 to 50 feet in thickness) of frozen, organic-rich silt and clay. The pay gravel varies from 5 to 23 feet thick (average of 13 feet). Concentrates contain garnet, pyrite, and magnetite. Bedrock is quartz-mica schist. The property was extensively explored from 1935 to 1940. A portion of the property was dredged in the mid 1940's. The area was re-evaluated in the mid-1980's and mined with a drag line from 1988 through 1991.
Workings: The Kiwalik Flats mine area was extensively explored by shafts and churn drill holes in 1935 by Keewalik Mining and in 1940 by Arctic Circle Exploration. A small portion of the deposit was dredged by the mid-1940's. In the early 1980's, the dredge tailings were reworked. In 1984, a program of 5 churn drill holes was completed to verify previous results and recalculate reserves. The 1984 drilling program determined that the upper 7 feet of gravel was mostly barren and that by stripping it as waste the grade of the deposit could be increased from 0.0237 ounces of gold per cubic yard to 0.0463 ounces per cubic yard. The area was mined by drag line from 1988 through 1991 by GHD (Douglas Culp, personal communication, 1998). In 1989, GHD processed 98,000 cubic yards of pay gravel. In 1991, GHD's last year of production, 15,000 cubic yards of overburden were stripped and 70,000 cubic yards of gravel were washed. The pay gravel is below water level so gravel must be removed from the pit for washing.
Age: Quaternary.
Production: Production from 1988 through 1991 was approximately 9,900 ounces of gold (Shaffer, 1997).
Reserves: Based on calculations from drilling by Arctic Circle Exploration in 1940, remaining reserves on the Kiwalik Flats were 43,130 ounces of gold in 2.35 million cubic yards of gravel, overlain by with 3.36 million cubic yards of overburden (Shaffer, 1997).

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

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Link to USGS - Alaska:	CA041

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References