Canyon Creek Mine, Aniak Mining District, Bethel Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Canyon Creek Mine	Mine
Aniak Mining District	Mining District
Bethel Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Canyon Creek is a headwater tributary of Fork Creek. According to coordinates given by Hoare and Cobb (1977), about 2.5 miles or almost all the creek upstream of its mouth, has been placer mined. The map site is the approximate midpoint of the placer workings. It is in the NW1/4 of section 13, T 1 N, R 62 W, of the Seward Meridian. This is locality 8 of Cobb (1972 [MF 455]) and of Hoare and Cobb (1977).
Geology: Placer gold was discovered on Canyon Creek in 1913 and mining occurred almost every year up to and possibly after WW II (Hoare and Cobb, 1977). The creek has not been glaciated. Gravels in the narrow flood plain, up to 300 feet wide, were 14 feet thick at the mouth and thinned upstream to thicknesses of 1 to 4 feet (Maddren, 1915). About 2.5 miles of the creek were mined, mostly by crude hand methods that, before WWII, included ripping up and washing individual bedrock slabs. The recovered gold was coarse and included flat, pumpkin-seed-size nuggets. The grade ran from 0.06 to 0.12 ounce of gold per square foot of bedrock. Panning of the tailings after WW II recovered much fine gold (Hoare and Cobb, 1977, p. 6). An alluvial bench, with gravels up to 10 feet thick, is present along the east side of the creek. Gold is reported to be present throughout the bench gravels (Hoare and Cobb, 1977). Bedrock in the drainage is mostly clastic sedimentary rocks of the mid-Cretaceous Kuskokwim Group. These rocks are intruded and thermally metamorphosed by an Upper Cretaceous felsic stock in the headwaters of the creek; dikes and sills are present locally elsewhere (Hoare and Cobb, 1977; Box and others, 1993).
Workings: The creek has been mined by open-cut methods over about 2.5 miles of its length. Much of the mining before WW II was by crude hand methods; a dozer was not added to the the operations until 1947. The amount of mining since WW II has not been reported.
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:	BH003

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References