Mountain Creek Prospect (Greenstone Creek), Nome Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Mountain Creek Prospect (Greenstone Creek)	Prospect
Nome Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Mountain Creek is a north tributary of upper Oregon Creek (see NM146) in the northern part of section 22, T. 9 S., R. 35 W., Kateel River Meridian. The mouth of Oregon Creek is where the Nome-Teller road crosses Cripple River. Mountain Creek was apparently called Greenstone Creek by Herreid (1970); the name Mountain Creek is not used on current U.S. Geological Survey maps. This is locality 70 of Cobb (1972 [MF 463], 1978 [OFR 78-93]) and it is accurate to within about 500 feet.
Geology: A placer gold deposit was discovered before 1904 in Mountain Creek; rich values were reported in schist-bearing gravel (Collier and others, 1908), and some mining was done in the lower part of the creek. Kennecott Exploration Company found about 5,000 ppb gold in a pan concentrate collected at the confluence of Mountain and Oregon Creeks. A negligible amount of scheelite has also been reported from the creek (Coats, 1944). Mountain Creek contains boulders of quartz as much as 3 feet across containing 1 to 2 percent stibnite for at least 1,000 feet upstream from its mouth. The lower part of Mountain Creek is in a chloritic schist; a massive metabasite body crops out a few hundred feet west of the mouth of the creek (Bundtzen and others, 1994). The east boundary of the metabasite unit probably is a northeast-trending high-angle fault, called the Aurora fault by Bundtzen and others (1994). Above an elevation of about 650 feet in the creek, one or both sides of the creek are in marble.
Workings: Gold was discovered in this creek before 1901 (Brooks and others, 1901). Collier and others (1908, p. 214) reported plans to mine one claim in auriferous schist-bearing gravel in 1904.
Age: Quaternary.

Commodities (Major) - Au; (Minor) - Sb, W
Development Status: Yes; small
Deposit Model: Alluvial placer Au (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	NM145

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References