Sugar Mine, Nome Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Sugar Mine	Mine
Nome Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: The Sugar placer mine is at an elevationof about 600 feet in the east headwaters of Deer Gulch and 4,000 feet south-southwest of the summit of King Mountain. The map location is just inside the north boundary of section 31, T. 10 S., R. 33 W., Kateel River Meridian. It is included in locality 117 of Cobb (1972 [MF 463], 1978 [OFR 78-93]).
Geology: The Sugar mine is one of several near the divide between upper Anvil Creek (NM236) and Dexter Creek (NM303) at surface elevations of about 450 to 600 feet, where high-level gravels were placer mined for gold. These deposits were in gravels that ranged from a few feet to more than 200 feet thick and commonly were very rich (Brooks and others, 1901; Collier and others, 1908). The richest pay was near bedrock and in decomposed or fractured bedrock. The high-level gravels were mined mostly by drifting, but some hydraulic mining also took place. At the Sugar mine, as at the nearby Snowflake mine (NM241), the pay streaks were staked. There was a 10-foot-thick pay section on an older gravel surface at a depth of about 100 feet. Drilling through the older gravel reached bedrock at 205 feet, where gold was present on the bedrock surface (Collier and others, 1908). A 100-foot-deep shaft 300 feet southeast of the Sugar mine, penetrated 4 feet of muck and silt, 25 feet of loose blue gravel containing gold colors, 51 feet of decomposed schist, 10 feet of washed gravel and schist, and 20 feet of schist; several exploration workings were driven off this shaft. About 100 feet southwest of this shaft, a 40-foot-deep prospect pit encountered 20 feet of brown gravel, 4 feet of blue clay and gravel, and 16 feet of yellow sandy clay and gravel. The high-level gravels were originally interpreted to be alluvial deposits in stream channels of former drainage systems, but more recent interpretations describe them as glacial outwash-related material (Cobb, 1973 [B 1374]; Nelson and Hopkins, 1972). The presence of erratic granite boulders and other exotic rock types suggests a glacial origin, but the exotic clasts are commonly in near-surface materials and not distributed throughout the high-level gravels (Moffit, 1913). The origin of the high-level gravels thus still seems in question. The richness of some of the placers suggests extensive reworking, proximity to lode sources, or both. Bedrock is mostly marble, in contact with graphitic schist nearby to the north, probably of early Paleozoic protolith age (Hummel, 1962 MF 247]; Sainsbury, Hummel, and Hudson, 1972 [OFR 72-326]; Nelson and Hopkins, 1972; Till and Dumoulin, 1994; Bundtzen and others, 1994).
Workings: The workings at the Sugar mine were underground and included a shaft about 100 feet deep.
Age: Quaternary.
Production: Production from the high-level gravels of the general area totaled about 100,000 ounces by 1903 (Collier and others, 1908).

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

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	NM242

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References