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

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

Some of the names associated with early mining claims are: Douglass and Edwards, Douglass and Milligrock, Hoxie, Tendness and Barr, Porter, and Wright. Prospecting work was done near the airstrip in 1964 (Herreid, 1965).
Location: The Bear Creek placer mine is along about a mile of Bear Creek between Polar and Bob Creek. The coordinates are for the camp at the junction of Split Creek, on the boundary of sections 23 and 24, T. 2 N., R. 12 W., of the Kateel River Meridian. Cobb, 1972 (MF-389), locations 29 and 30. Also see Additional comments.
Geology: Bedrock in the mine area is predominately altered, Jurassic andesitic tuff and greenstone which are cut by mafic and felsic dikes. Quartz and calcite veins carry disseminated sulfides. Breccia zones in greenstones also carry disseminated sulfides and have a thin, oxidized cap which carries some gold. Abundant heavy, red, cherty rock in the placer concentrate occurs as crosscutting veins and irregular masses in greenstone. At the Bear Creek gold placer flaky gold and platinum occur on bedrock or in cracks in upper several inches of bedrock. During mining bedrock must be thoroughly cleaned since much of the gold is close to or in cracks in bedrock. The bedrock surface is very irregular. Concentrates contained gold, platinum, magnetite, hematite, pyrite, garnet and chrome spinel (Harrington, 1919). The gold was flaky and worth $19.20 per ounce in 1905. Analysis of platinum minerals from placer concentrate gave the following results: 72.82% Pt; 15.58% Ir, 8.17% Os, 2.29% Ru, 0.78% Rh, and 0.36% Pd (Moffit, 1905).
Workings: Small-scale placer mining has been done on Bear Creek since the early 1900s, continuing intermittently until at least the 1960's. Most of the mining has been above and below Split Creek (Herreid, 1965).
Age: Quaternary.

Commodities (Major) - Au; (Minor) - Ag, Ir, Os, Pb, Pd, Pt, Rh, Ru, Zn
Development Status: Yes; small
Deposit Model: Placer Au-PGE (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	CA026

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References