Yellow Creek Mine, Kantishna Mining District, Denali Borough, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Yellow Creek Mine	Mine
Kantishna Mining District	Mining District
Denali Borough	Borough
Alaska	State
USA	Country

The creek is in Denali National Park and Preserve.
Location: Yellow Creek is a 0.75-mile-long, north-flowing tributary to Glacier Creek. The location is about at the midpoint of Yellow Creek, in the NW1/4 of section 3, T. 16 S., R. 17 W., Fairbanks Meridian. The location is accurate. Resource block Y-1 covers Yellow Creek and the lower part of an unnamed headwater tributary (Levell, 1984 [v. 2]; Thornsberry, McKee, and Salisbury, 1984, fig. K-3).
Geology: Yellow Creek is a steep, narrow tributary to Glacier Creek. It is fed by west-flowing Ruby Creek and by an unnamed, east-flowing creek; both tributary creeks are steep. Yellow Creek occupies a linear, fault-controlled, northwest-trending valley. Upper Yellow Creek, Ruby Creek and the unnamed east-flowing tributary are incised into bedrock of the Spruce Creek sequence. Lower Yellow Creek cuts Birch Creek bedrock (Bundtzen, 1981; Thornsberry, McKee, and Salisbury, 1984, fig. K-2). Placer deposits in Yellow Creek consist of poorly sorted, angular to subangular colluvium, angular bouldery gravel, and the uppermost schist bedrock. A 1983 operation in mid-Yellow Creek recovered gold from angular gravel about 7 to 10 feet thick in a paystreak 40 to 50 feet wide. The gold was coarse and crystalline, and commonly adhered to quartz; its fineness was about 700. Crystalline gold from an operation at the head of Yellow Creek sold for about $1000 per ounce (Levell, 1984, v. 2, no. 1). The concentrates contain abundant galena, and lesser amounts of magnetite, pyrite, stibnite, and hematite. The grade of the deposit in mid-Yellow Creek was about 0.03 ounce of gold per cubic yard. The grade of the deposit at the head of the creek that contained the crystalline gold was slightly less than 0.01 ounce of gold per cubic yard (Levell, 1984, v. 2). Yellow Creek drains mineralized Spruce Creek rocks that are the source of the gold, sulfide, and oxide minerals in the placer deposit. The angular and locally crystalline nature of the gold indicate a proximal source.
Workings: Gold was discovered in Yellow Creek in 1906 (Prindle, 1907); a paystreak reportedly was mined out by 1916 (Capps, 1919). The creek was mined with mechanical equipment in 1983; early production was probably by hand methods. There probably has been no mining since 1985.
Age: Holocene.
Production: Based on production in 1983, total recovery probably exceeded 1000 ounces of gold.
Reserves: There is a resource of 30,000 to 35,000 cubic yards of coarse, angular, alluvial gravel in Yellow Creek (Thornsberry, McKee, and Salisbury, 1984, fig. K-3, block Y-1). The gravel contains about 270 to 900 ounces of gold, based on samples grading 0.009 to 0.03 ounce of gold per cubic yard.

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

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Link to USGS - Alaska:	MM079

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References