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

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

Location: Patterson Creek is a west tributary to Candle Creek. The mouth of Patterson Creek is 1,500 feet upstream of Camp 19 on Candle Creek. This is locality 65 of Cobb (1972; MF 417; 1975; OFR 75-429).
Geology: Placer gold was discovered on Patterson Creek early in the century and mining was reported to have taken place by 1909 (Henshaw (1910). Six to eight feet of gravel on blue clay was reported from early workings (Moffit, 1905). The gravel contains abundant vein quartz and quartzite, a few pebbles of limonite and barite(?), and rare fragments resembling altered rhyolite porphyry (Briskey, 1983). Mining was done by both drift and open-cut methods (Cobb, 1975, OFR 75-429). Drift mining is reported to have locally exposed galena-bearing veins (BN073) in bedrock. Mining operations may have taken place over a fair amount of the creek; it is about 2.4 miles long below the headwater tributaries. Bedrock is extensively covered by tundra but what is exposed in the area is part of a Lower Paleozoic metasedimentary assemblage (Till and others, 1986). A small granitic stock is exposed on the ridge south of upper Candle Creek (Till and others, 1986) and Sandvik (1956) notes that granitic rocks have been identified in the headwaters of Jump Creek and Minehaha Creek. Intermediate to felsic dikes and sills crosscutting metamorphic rocks have been exposed in placer workings along Candle Creek (BN074).
Workings: Both drift and open-cut placer operations have taken place; most work has been surface open-cut operations.
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:	BN072

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References