Melsing Creek; Basin Creek; Benson Gulch Mine, Council Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Melsing Creek; Basin Creek; Benson Gulch Mine	Mine
Council Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Melsing Creek is a north tributary to the Niukluk River; its mouth is at Council. Placer mining occurred on the lower 1.1 miles of the drainage, between elevations of about 85 and 125 feet, and a dredge operated for a time several miles up from the mouth of Melsing Creek (D. Grybeck, oral communication, 1999). This is locality 123 of Cobb (1972, MF 445; 1978, OF 78-181).
Geology: The gravels of Melsing Creek are generally thin, ranging from 1.5 to 8 feet thick. Several feet of gravel carried gold in places but better grades were present on or in bedrock (Collier and others, 1908) A clay false bedrock is at least locally present and low terraces adjacent to the active drainage were also gold-bearing. There is little documentation but a dredge operated in upper Melsing Creek, probably in section 36, prior to WW II (D. Grybeck, oral communication, 1999). Bedrock in Melsing Creek is part of a lower Paleozoic metasedimentary assemblage but an impure schistose Ordovician marble is the bedrock just to the east in the Basin Creek drainage (Till and others, 1986).
Workings: Placer mining took place for many years along Melsing Creek between the time of discovery in 1898 (Brooks and others, 1901) and 1938 (Smith, 1939, B 910-A). Much of the mining was by dredging and the entire lower 1.1 miles of Melsing Creek and nearby parts of its tributary Basin Creek have been worked. There is also some indication of dredging in upper Melsing 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:	SO048

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References