Location: The Rubicon prospect is at an elevation of approximately 2,500 feet, 1/4 mile south of upper Gold Creek. It is 1.2 miles north of Roberts Peak and 1 mile west of Clark Peak, in the SE1/4NE1/4 section 20, T. 41 S., R. 68 E. of the Copper River Meridian. The location is accurate.
Geology: The Rubicon prospect was discovered in 1906 and has been developed by 5 adits and a 400-foot trench. The deposit consists of an older set of foliation-concordant boudinaged, quartz veins in black phyllite and felsic schist (Redman and others, 1989). These veins are up to 10 feet thick and 200 feet long and contain disseminated pyrrhotite. A series of en echelon faults intersect these veins and contain siderite, quartz, and brecciated wallrock. The late-stage, fault-controlled, quartz-siderite veins contain arsenopyrite, galena, pyrrhotite, and sphalerite. U.S. Bureau of Mines samples contained up to 5.3 ppm gold, 797.1 ppm silver, 2.47 percent lead, and 3.65 percent zinc. The U.S. Bureau of Mines estimates a resource of 40,500 tons with an average of 2.37 ounces of silver and 0.03 ounce of gold per ton (Redman and others, 1989). This prospect is in the Juneau Gold Belt, which consists of more than 200 gold-quartz-vein deposits that have produced nearly 7 million ounces of gold. These gold-bearing mesothermal quartz vein systems form a zone 160 km long by 5 to 8 km wide along the western margin of the Coast Mountains. The vein systems are in or near shear zones adjacent to west-verging, mid-Cretaceous thrust faults. The veins are hosted by diverse, variably metamorphosed, sedimentary, volcanic, and intrusive rocks. From the Coast Mountains batholith westward, the host rocks include mixed metasedimentary and metavolcanic sequences of Carboniferous and older, Permian and Triassic, and Jurassic-Cretaceous age. The sequences are juxtaposed along mid-Cretaceous thrust faults (Miller and others, 1994). The sequences are intruded by mid-Cretaceous to middle Eocene plutons, mainly diorite, tonalite, granodiorite, quartz monzonite, and granite. Sheetlike tonalite plutons emplaced just east of the Juneau Gold Belt and undeformed granite and granodiorite bodies that are emplaced farther to the east are between 55 and 48 Ma (Gehrels and others, 1991). The structural grain of the belt is defined by northwest-striking, moderately to steeply northeast-dipping, penetrative foliation that developed between Cretaceous and Eocene time (Miller and others, 1994). The majority of the veins in the Juneau Gold Belt strike northwest. Isotopic dates indicate that the auriferous veins in the Juneau Gold Belt formed between 56 and 55 Ma (Miller and others, 1994; Goldfarb and others, 1997).
Workings: The deposit at the Rubicon prospect was discovered in 1906 and was developed by 5 adits and a 400-foot trench.
Age: Isotopic dates indicate that the auriferous veins in the Juneau Gold Belt formed between 56 and 55 Ma (Miller and others, 1994; Goldfarb and others, 1997).
Reserves: The U.S. Bureau of Mines estimates a resource of 40,500 tons of ore with an average of 2.37 ounces of silver and 0.03 ounce of gold per ton (Redman and others, 1989).

Commodities (Major) - Ag, Au, Pb, Zn
Development Status: None
Deposit Model: Low-sulfide Au-quartz vein (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 36a)

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Mineral List

5 valid minerals.