Gold mining in Alaska
Encyclopedia
Gold mining in Alaska, a state of the United States
, has been a major industry and impetus for exploration and settlement since a few years after the United States acquired the territory from Russia. Russia
n explorers discovered placer gold in the Kenai River
in 1848, but no gold was produced. Gold mining started in 1870 from placers southeast of Juneau, Alaska
.
Gold is found and has been mined throughout Alaska; except in the vast swamps of the Yukon Flats, and along the North Slope
between the Brooks Range
and the Beaufort Sea
. Areas near Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome are responsible for most of Alaska's historical and current gold production. Nearly all of the large and many of the small placer gold mines currently operating in the US are in Alaska. Six modern large-scale hard rock mines operate in Alaska in 2008; four of those are gold-producing mines (an additional gold mine suspended production in late 2007). There are also some small-scale hard rock gold-mining operations. Alaska currently produces more gold (in 2007: 673,274 troy oz from lode mines, and 53,848 troy oz from placer deposits) than any state except Nevada
. In 2007, gold accounted for 15% of the mining wealth produced in Alaska. Zinc and lead, mainly from the Red Dog mine
, accounted for 73%; silver, mainly from the Greens Creek mine, accounted for 8%; coal and aggregates accounted for nearly 2% each. Alaska produced a total of 40.3 million troy ounces of gold from 1880 through the end of 2007.
continues throughout Alaska. In 2007, an estimated 175 placer mines produced 53,848 ounces of gold, an approximately 15% drop in activity and production compared to 2006. All of these operations are seasonal, none employ more than a few dozen people. Many of them are family operations with roots reaching back several generations. One mine, at Nolan Creek, mines frozen gravels by underground methods. A significant portion of current exploration for lode gold in Alaska occurs in placer gold camps.
, hosted several hard rock gold prospects, including the LeRoy mine, which exploited quartz veins for about 10,000 ounces of gold production. The district, which includes Skagway and Haines
, is bordered to the north and east by Canada. To the west is the Pacific Ocean and the Chichagof
District lies to the south. The Discovery Channel
series Gold Rush Alaska
takes place in this region.
Over 7 million ounces of lode gold and 80,000 ounces of placer gold have been recovered from the Juneau district.
s. Discovered and staked in the 1920s, production of about 20,000 tonnes of 0.25 ounce-per-ton gold ore occurred in the mid-1930s. The Funter Bay underground lode mine produced about 500 thousand tonnes of copper-nickel-cobalt ore, without gold, from a Mesozoic gabbro-norite pipe. No significant placer mining was done on Admiralty. About 500,000 ounces of gold, almost all from the currently-operating Greens Creek lode silver mine, have been recovered from the Admiralty district.
, Yakobi
, Baranof
and smaller islands comprise the district.
Numerous lode and placer prospects and mines exist in the district. Major production came from underground lode mines exploiting gold-in-quartz veins.
The Apex-El Nido produced perhaps 50,000 ounces of gold from a mile of underground workings exploiting polymetallic quartz veins.
From 1922 to 1933 the Hirst-Chichagof produced 133,000 ounces of gold and 33,000 ounces of silver from polymetallic quartz veins assaying nearly 1 ounce of gold per ton. There are over a mile of underground workings, reaching 2000 feet (609.6 m) below the surface. Significant reserves remain, which have attracted exploration efforts in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Chichagof mine opened in 1905 and by 1942 had yielded 660,000 ounces of gold and 195,000 ounces of silver from quartz veins assaying over 1 oz gold per ton. There were several miles of workings on 5 levels. Six shafts reached a maximum of 2750 feet (838.2 m) below sea level.
Between 1981 and 1988 several thousand feet of new workings were dug, and engineering and environmental studies were done, but the project was abandoned.
, Etolin
, and Wrangell Island
s, and the mainland between the Juneau
and Ketchikan districts. Many small lode deposits were located in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The most significant lode producer was the Sumdum Chief, which was discovered in 1889 and operated until exhausted in 1903. 24,000 ounces of gold were extracted from two quartz veins averaging ore of about 0.39 ounces per ton of both gold and silver. The mine reached a depth of 1200 feet (365.8 m) and had a ten-stamp mill. In Windham Bay, a cluster of mineral claim holdings were consolidated in the 1920s; the Jensen mine was the most productive of these, producing about 50 ounces of gold. Several aerial tramways, thousands of feet long, connected various adits and mills.
district, consisting of Dall
, Prince of Wales, Revillagigedo
, and smaller islands, as well some mainland, in the southernmost-part of Alaska.
Numerous historical lode mines and prospects for base metals, uranium, rare earth elements (REE's), iron, and platinum group elements (PGE's), as well as gold exist in the Ketchikan district. Major gold production came from underground lode mines exploiting: gold-bearing quartz veins in metamorphic rocks (such as the Gold Standard, Sea Level, Dawson, Golden Fleece, and Goldstream mines); skarns (at the Jumbo and Kassan Peninsula copper-gold mines); zoned mafic-ultramafic plutons, as at the Salt Chuck silver-gold-copper-PGE mine; and VMS deposits such as Niblack.
A high-yielding mine in Ketchikan District is the Golden Fleece Mine, located about 0.2 mile north of the north end of James Lake on Prince of Wales Island, latitude: 55.152179, longitude: -132.056635. The mine was most active from 1901 to 1905.
, includes some southern foothills of the Brooks Range
, and extends to the crest of the Brooks Range. Discovery of placer gold in 1906 was quickly followed by lode discoveries. Most of the placer-producing creeks drain the area of lode mineralization. The district produced about 48,000 ounces of placer gold and 17,000 ounces of lode gold.
Little Squaw Creek drains an area cut by many auriferous veins. Some of the placers in the basin are exceptionally rich. By 1916 most of the shallow placers were playing out so miners shifted their interest to the placer drift mines (underground operations). The most notable of these is the Little Squaw Bench, including the Mellow Bench. Approximately 29,000 ounces of gold were recovered averaging 1.0 oz/cubic yard of gold in the gravels with spikes of up to 4.6 oz/cubic yard. Some individual nuggets were over 10 ounces. In 2010, gold production resumed with mining of the placer deposits by the Gold Rich Mining Company.
In 1909 to 1915 development and underground gold mining occurred at the Little Squaw, with a few hundred feet of workings built and a few dozen ounces of gold recovered. The nearby Mikado mine enjoyed similar efforts around 1913. In the 1960s , 1970s and 1980s additional work was done. These later efforts probably recovered more than 10,000 ounces of gold.
Significant efforts resumed in 2006, and are ongoing, to explore the Little Squaw placer and lode deposits.
basin including the Alatna and Kanuti rivers and the village of Bettles. The district extends from the southern flank of the Brooks Range to the northern Ray Mountains
, and is directly west of the Chandalar district. Much of the district is now in Gates of the Arctic National Park. Gold was discovered in placer deposits in the district in 1901. About 350,000 ounces of placer gold have been won from the area, perhaps 85% of it from near Wiseman
. Mining continues today in the district.
Much of the district is underlain by bedded Paleozoic rocks, a schist belt extends along the southern foothills of the Brooks Range. Cretaceous plutons intrude metamorphic rocks in the southern part of the district. Pleistocene ice sheets from the Brooks Range and cirque glaciers in the Ray Mountains covered much of the higher elevations. Glaciers are now restricted to the highest cirques of the Brooks Range.
Miners produced 135,000 ounces of gold from Nolan Creek between 1904 and 1999. Some of the placer gold is mined by underground methods in frozen gravels. A 42-troy ounce nugget, Alaska's twentieth-largest, came from Marys Bench on Nolan Creek. Placer mining activity continues, with a reserve of 114,760 ounces of gold reported in 2000.
Mining occurred on the Hammond River, a tributary of the Koyukuk River, from about 1900 to at least 2000. Exact production is unknown, it is estimated at about 80,000 ounces.
A rich, deep channel was struck beneath the Hammond River in 1912, and during the following 4 years, over 48,000 oz gold were produced, including a 138.8-oz nugget. (Pringel, 1921; T.K. Bundtzen, written communication, 1999)
Much of the gold was coarse: the third (146 troy oz.), fourth (139 troy oz.), 14th (61 troy ounces), and 17th (55 troy ounces) largest gold nuggets in Alaska were found on the Hammond River between Discovery claim and Vermont Creek a distance of 4 miles.
Only the richest ground was possible to mine as the Hammond River was one of the most remote placer districts in North America until 1975 when the Dalton Highway for the Alaskan Pipeline project was completed.
Historically the Hammond River is one of the largest gold producers in the Koyukuk district. Gold was discovered on the Hammond River, just above the lower canyon mouth, about 2 miles upstream from the Koyukuk River. In the early years, attempts were made to mine the modern stream gravels. At the mouth of Swift Creek a wing dam was built to divert the river for mining, but numerous cobbles and small boulders made the venture unprofitable. Approximately 500 ounces was recovered with pick and shovels in Summer of 1902. Later, shafts sunk 66 feet to bedrock at the discovery site were reported to show the presence of gold in paying quantities. The majority of the gold production on the Hammond came out of the deep channel as early miners were unable to deal with the water and cobbles in the present river channel.
The Hammond River contains deep channel, bench, and modern stream placers.
Much of the Hammond River gold is of the coarse nugget variety. Several nuggets weighing from 45 to 59 oz were found in the early days. In 1914 a 138.8 oz nugget (fourth largest in Alaska) was found in a mud-filled crack on bedrock near Gold Bottom Gulch (Engineering and Mining Journal, 1915, p. 1021; T. Bundzten, personal communication, 1999).
In 1914,on No. 4 Above, Hammond River (Goldbottom Gulch), J. C. Kinney and partners picked up nuggets from bedrock valued at about $20,000; one nugget, the second largest ever found in Alaska, was worth $2600. The rest of the dump when sluiced yielded a little less than the value of the "pickings." (Engineering and Mining Journal, 1914, p. 1062 Vol. 98 No. 24. (Gold at $20.00 per ounce.)
Placers on Slisco bench, an ancient buried channel of Hammond River near Vermont Creek on the west side of the present Hammond River contain a measured resource of 31,099 oz gold with grades of up to 0.3 oz/cy. Inferred resources on the same bench range from 50,000 to 150,000 oz. (2002) . Other benches of Hammond River between Discovery Claim and Slisco Bench have similar potential but have not been systematically prospected with modern technology.
U.S. Department of Interior BLM-Alaska Technical Report 50
Mineral Investigations in the Koyukuk Mining
District, Northern Alaska
Maddren USGS Bulletin 532 1913
Placer mines in the Zane Hills on Bear Creek, a tributary of the Hogatza River, are the biggest source of gold from the district. Placer deposits clustered near the village of Hughes and Indian Mountain are the other significant source of placer gold from the district. The district has produced about 245,000 ounces, with traces of copper, lead, zinc, tin, silver and platinum.
The mine is located in the remote Kaiyuh Mountains of west-central Alaska about 40 miles (64.4 km) south of the Yukon River
village of Galena
. The Illinois Creek lode gold-silver mine exploited a shear-hosted gold deposit which was partly expressed as color anomalies visible from aircraft. Located on State of Alaska land, it was discovered in the 1980s. In February 1996 a feasibility study was completed, with the deposit estimated to contain about 350,000 ounces of gold and 2,500,000 ounces of silver. Construction began the next month, but was halted by winter conditions in November. By then, with the development uncompleted and six-million more than the total mine construction-and-operating budget of 26-million dollars already spent, USMX, the mining company that owned Illinois Creek, was millions of dollars in arrears on invoices and short on cash. New financing allowed construction to resume in 1997; the mine poured its first gold in June 1997. In 1998 the company entered bankruptcy. In 1999 the State of Alaska assumed control of the mine. A mine-to-reclaim arrangement between the state and a newly-involved mining contractor resulted in the reclamation and closure of the mine by 2005. A bond is in place to provide environmental monitoring for 30 years.
, platinum
, scheelite
, allanite
, and native bismuth
have been recovered along with gold from placer mines in the district. Alaska's largest gold nugget, 294.1 troy ounces, was found in the Ruby District in 1998 by miner Barry Clay. For pictures of the nugget see the swiftcreekmine web site.
intruded by a broad range of igneous rocks. Many gold occurrences are known, but no gold lodes are identified. Placer mining has been reported for every year since 1894.
is about 50 miles (80.5 km) northwest of Fairbanks
on the Dalton Highway
. In July, 1914 Jay Livengood and N.R. Hudson discovered gold on Livengood Creek. Hundreds of people arrived in the district the following winter. A post office existed at Livengood from 1915 to 1957. Only a few dozen people live at Livengood today, some only seasonally. A variety of creeks in the district were mined. Many gold lode occurrences are known and exploration continues for open pittable lode deposits. Over 500,000 ounces of gold have been recovered from placers in the district.
Early development and production was from relatively shallow pay in tributaries of Livengood Creek. By 1939, large, deeply buried (80 to 110 feet), thawed, bench placer deposits on the northwest limit of Livengood Creek valley were defined. The pay streak varied from 100 to 1000 feet (304.8 m) wide and was at least 6 miles (9.7 km) long. Gold reserves of over 1 million ounces were defined by drilling prior to 1940. A dredge operated near the town of Livengood in 1940, 1946 and probably other years.
Alaska's 12th-largest (73 troy ounces) and 16th-largest (56 troy ounces) nuggets were found in the district, on Dome Creek.
in July 1902, after Felix Pedro
(real name Felice Pedroni), an Italian immigrant and Tom Gilmore discovered gold in the hills north of the Tanana and Chena Rivers in 1901. The district was and is a major producer of gold from both placer and lode deposits: placers have produced over 8 million troy ounces (250 tonnes) of gold, lodes have yielded over 4 million ounces.
The recently discovered and built Pogo mine is located on a hillside above the Goodpaster River, about 85 miles (136.8 km) south-east of Fairbanks, Alaska. The deposit was discovered in 1994 by the Sumitomo companies on land owned by the State of Alaska. A private 49 miles (78.9 km) gravel road and power line now connects the mine to the Richardson Highway corridor near Delta Junction. The mine is an underground operation that exploits two large (several-meters thick) and high-grade (averaging almost 0.5 ounces of gold per ton of ore) gold-bearing quartz veins. Approximately half of the tailings are returned underground, the rest are disposed of on the surface. The mine was developed, and originally operated, by Teck-Cominco, the same company operating the world's largest zinc mine; the Red Dog mine
in northwest Alaska. Sumitomo Metal Mining (a non-operating partner and part-owner of the Pogo deposit since discovery) bought Teck-Cominco's share of the mine in 2009 and is now the operator. The first gold dore bar at Pogo was poured on February 12, 2006. 190 people were employed at the mine in 2007.
In early 2007 Pogo contained reserves of 5.6 million ounces of gold in ore grading 0.41 opt gold. Projected mine life is ten years.
touched off Interior Alaska's first gold rush
. The mining boom ushered in a wave of settlement that forever changed the place, not only for its new residents but for the Athabascan Indians who occupied this region long before them. The miners who prospected nearly every creek in the region eventually extracted more than a half-million ounces of gold from the Fortymile, including a 56.8 troy ounce nugget, Alaska's 15th-largest. Reports of starvation and lawlessness among the miners resulted in the Army sending troops to the Eagle
area to provide law enforcement in 1899. Soldiers soon began work on a trail from Valdez
to Eagle.
Gold was first discovered in the Chicken Creek drainage in 1896, 10 years after the gold discovery on the Fortymile River. The F.E. Company, a subsidiary of the U.S. Smelting Refining & Mining Co., acquired most of the claims during the 1940s and dredged 2 miles (3.2 km) of the creek from 1959 to 1967. Since then, several family operations have mined on the creek. It is estimated that over 100,000 ounces of gold has been produced from the Chicken Creek drainage.
The beginning of the end of the Fortymile Gold Rush came in August 1896 when George Carmack
reported the first gold strike along the Klondike River
in Canada. Within a few years the once-booming towns in the Fortymile region were abandoned and forgotten. Some of the original Fortymile miners returned to the area after the Klondike Gold Rush
passed. From 1887–1890 the Upper Yukon region was the richest and most productive mining area in the region. During those three years the area produced 1,200,000 ounces of gold, accounting for 5 percent of Alaska's total gold production.
; it includes parts of the Wrangell Mountains
and the Alaska Range
. Difficulties of location, lack of water, and small deposit size limited placer activity.
The Nabesna underground lode mine produced gold-copper-silver ore between 1930 and WWII.
.
basin. Geologically it is dominated by flysch
of Cretaceous-age Kuskokwim Group sediments and a variety of igneous rocks. It also includes a variety of exotic terranes. In 1913, Alfred H. Brooks
described it as, "a more or less broken belt of gold-bearing rocks which stretches northeastward from Goodnews Bay parallel to the lower course of the Kuskokwim, toward the Iditarod District, and a number of streams traversing this belt carry auriferous gravels." The KGB lies mostly within the southwestern part of the Tintina Gold Province or "Golden Arch" which lies roughly between the Denali-Farewell
and Kaltag-Tintina
fault systems and arcs up from southwest Alaska, through central Alaska, and down across the Yukon Territory to British Columbia.
The KGB includes all or parts of the historic Aniak
/Tuluksak
, Anvik
, Bethel
, Goodnews Bay
, Iditarod
-Flat
, Innoko, Marshall
, McGrath
, Ruby
, and Tolstoi mining districts, as well as newly-realized gold-rich areas. Over 3.2 million ounces of gold have been recovered from the belt.
The first mineral discovery by the Russians in Alaska (a cinnabar
-stibnite
deposit) occurred in the Aniak district in 1838. Pay gold was found in 1901 on tributaries of the Kuskokwim River in the Aniak district.
The district has the Bering Sea to the west, the Yukon River to the south, and the Iditarod and Kaiyuh districts to the east.
Placer mining began on benches and tributaries on the east side of Crooked Creek and its tributary Donlin Creek in 1910; a family-scale placer-mining operation continues today. Granitic dike swarms cutting the shales and sandstones of the Kuskokwim Group rocks in the hills east of upper Crooked Creek were recognized by USGS geologists in 1915 as the probable source of the placer gold.
In the 1970s Calista Corporation, an Alaska Native Corporation, as part of its land grant under ANSCA selected the land east of Crooked Creek, based on its mineral potential. In 1986 modern hardrock exploration of the Donlin area began with WestGold's efforts, which were abandoned after two years, due not to the lack of gold, but to the refractory (technically difficult to extract from the rock) nature of the gold. PlacerDome signed a lease with Calista and began exploration at Donlin in 1995. That effort continues today, having evolved to a 50:50 partnership between Barrick Gold
and NovaGold Resources
, in cooperation with Calista, the landowner. Over 150 million dollars have been expended on exploration, engineering, and environmental studies.
If eventually exploited, the mine will be an open pit several miles wide. Latest estimates (April 2009) report that Donlin contains 29.3 million ounces of proven and probable gold reserves (calculated at a gold price of $750) and an additional 10 million ounces of gold resource. The gold occurs within the crystal lattice of arsenopyrite associated with other metal sulfides in veins, veinlets, and disseminations mainly in the felsic dikes, but also in less common altered mafic dikes and in the sediments.
consortium.
The drainage basin of Tolstoi Creek, a north-flowing tributary of the Dishna, roughly defines the district. The district lies between the Iditarod and Innoko districts. Placer gold and platinum were discovered by drifting in frozen gravels 35 feet deep on Boob Creek in the winter of 1915-1916. A gold rush occurred in the district the following winter. Historic production of 11,000 ounces of gold, as well as some byproduct platinum, is recorded for the district.
The property is located approximately 40 km west of McGrath, and 440 km northwest of Anchorage. Ganes is famous for producing spectacular gold nuggets including the 5th (122 troy ounces) and 13th-largest (62.5 troy ounce) in Alaska. The presence of cobble-size quartz with sulfide boxwork and coarse gold suggest that the placer gold is primary, originating from bedrock sources. Historic production figures from Ganes Creek are in excess of 250,000 oz. gold; an additional estimated resource of 736,000 oz. of placer gold exists on patented claims.
The Nixon Fork mine is an underground lode gold-copper mine located 32 miles (51.5 km) northeast of McGrath, Alaska
. Placer gold was discovered nearby in 1917, by 1918 hardrock mining was underway, and continued intermittently until 1964. Ore consists of shoots of massive sulfides and native gold found with skarns along the contact of sedimentary rocks and the Mystery Creek quartz monzonite stock.The mine was reopened for exploration, permitted, and developed by Nevada Goldfields, Inc. in 1995 and operated until 1999. In 2005 resource and exploration development resumed. Gold production occurred in 2006 and 2007, production is currently suspended. Production has totaled 187,000 ounces of gold, 2,190,000 pounds of copper, and at least 11,000 ounces of silver. Two small ore bodies have proven and probable reserves of approximately 126,400 tonnes, containing 133,730 ounces of gold. An additional 116,000 tonnes of existing mill tailings are reported to contain 30,200 ounces of gold.
. About 600,000 ounces of platinum
(plus some iridium
, osmium
, ruthenium
, palladium
, and rhenium
) and 27,000 ounces of gold were won from placer deposits in the Salmon River
from 1934 to 1976. Present reserves are unknown, but are the subject of ongoing exploration. The source of the platinum-group elements appears to be in the Red Mountain
and Susie Mountain ultramafic rocks. Extensive geochemical and geophysical surveys during the past several years have identified areas with as much as 0.1 ounce per ton platinum in the soils, but no reserve has been demonstrated.
, were discovered in 1898 by Jafet Lindeberg
, Erik Lindblom
and John Brynteson
, the "Three Lucky Swedes". Word of the strike caused a major gold rush to Nome
in the spring of 1899. Construction of a new hardrock gold mine at Rock Creek was completed, and start-up procedures initiated in late 2008. Efforts at the new mine are suspended due to mill design inadequacies and difficulties meeting regulatory requirements. NovaGold's Rock Creek project includes the Rock Creek mine and mill complex seven miles (11 km) north of Nome, and eventual additional millfeed from the historic underground Big Hurrah mine site 42 miles (67.6 km) east. Over 3.6 million ounces of gold have been recovered from the Nome district, almost all of it from placer deposits.
, copper
, lead
, platinum
, bismuth
, tungsten
, mercury
, molybdenum
, silver
, and rare-earth elements.
, Inglutalik, Ungalik, and Shaktoolik Rivers, all draining into northeastern Norton Sound
.
is located at the mouth of Resurrection Creek. Charles Miller located the first claim on Resurrection Creek; then leased it to others for working. By 1893, about a dozen miners were working claims on Resurrection Creek. In
1894, more claims were established on Resurrection Creek.
, is located in central Alaska northeast of milepost 81 on the Denali Highway
. A 52-troy ounce nugget (Alaska's 18th-largest) came from Lucky Gulch, a tributary of Valdez Creek. Cambior's Valdez Creek Mine recovered over 75,000 ounces of gold annually, making it the largest placer
operation in North America in 1992. Produced 459,162 ounces of gold from 1984 to 1995. Substantial reserves remain upstream of the active mine. The mine has been shut down and the site reclaimed, but other small-scale placer and lode deposits remain nearby.
Golden Zone Mine. (Copper
, gold
, silver
, arsenic
, zinc
). Pipe-like body produced 1,581 ounces of gold, 8,617 ounces of silver, and 21 tons of copper. Recent work indicates reserves of the Pipe, Bunkhouse and Copper King deposits as 13.3 million tons grading 0.095 ounces per ton of gold.
was discovered in the Yentna District (also known as the Cache Creek District) of the upper Susitna Valley in 1898, soon followed by claim staking
. Placer mining
was reported in the Cache Creek drainage of the Dutch Hills by 1906. Quaternary glaciofluvial deposits, alluvial deposits, and Tertiary conglomeratic white quartz-breccia units have been mined in the Dutch Hills. About 200,000 ounces (6.2 tonnes) of gold has been produced from these placer deposits.
Gold was first reported in what would become the Willow Creek Mining District (also known as the Independence Mine/Hatcher Pass
District) by Robert Hatcher. Hatcher discovered and staked the first lode gold claim in the Willow Creek Valley in September 1906. Through 2006 the district produced 667-thousand ounces of hard rock gold and 60-thousand ounces of placer gold.
and Kobuk River
, define the Kiana, Shungnak, Noatak, and Selawick districts. The Noatak district is now within the Noatak National Preserve
, only tiny gold placer production was recorded from some tributaries near the Noatak headwaters. The Selawick district has one creek where gold was produced by a 2-man operation for ten years during the 1950s and 1960s.
's tributaries. This gold strike (which by some accounts was false) attracted nearly 2,000 people to Alaska, though only 800 actually stayed to find gold. Although mining has continued to take place in this area, little gold has been discovered.
. Mining has been nearly continuous in this area since discovery. Nephrite jade also occurs in this area.
. Gold was discovered on Dahl Creek in 1898, which was the major producer. Copper, chromium, cadmium
, and silver, were also recovered with the gold.
and mining using gold pans, sluiceboxes, rockers, suction dredges, and metal detectors, is enjoying a resurgence in Alaska.
There are many commercial ventures that charge fees to recreational miners located on historically-rich placer ground, some are road-accessible, many are in remote fly-in locations, most offer lodging and a complete suite of services.
Much of the State and Federal-owned land in Alaska is open to recreational mining but there are regulations governing how such mining can be done.
It is illegal to mine on public land that is closed to such activities; or to mine without permission on either public land that is already staked or leased, or privately-owned land.
Popular areas include; areas of Chugach National Forest
, areas within Alaska State Parks such as Chugach State Park
, Kenai State Parks, and Independence Mine State Historical Park, and along the Dalton Highway
.
Most of the public-access areas have few or no facilities, such as outhouses, but that's changing, and adds to the feeling of getting in touch with the gold mining roots of the Pioneers.
Perhaps the easiest to get to, and one with camping areas close by, is the Caribou Creek Recreational Mining area. "Physical fitness, health, and age should be considered due to the steepness of the trail." Located on the Glenn Highway
east of Palmer
, the area has fine gold and easy access.
The Hatcher Pass
Public Use Area is located approximately fifteen miles north of Palmer on the Little Susitna River. The area is open to a variety of recreational activities, including recreational mining. A fact sheet provides details on recreational mining within the Hatcher Pass Public Use Area.
Near Fairbanks, both the Pedro Creek area (about 15 miles north of Fairbanks and the site of the original Fairbanks gold discovery by Felix Pedro
in 1902) and Nome Creek area within the White Mountains National Recreation Area (approximately 60 miles north of Fairbanks) have easy access. Gold mining on Nome Creek began in 1900, and there was a stampede in 1910 when word of the find leaked out.
Somewhat more challenging due to access, but also more rewarding, is the Petersville State Recreational Mining Area.
You can also mine on the beaches of Nome.
Mining organizations
Government links
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, has been a major industry and impetus for exploration and settlement since a few years after the United States acquired the territory from Russia. Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n explorers discovered placer gold in the Kenai River
Kenai River
The Kenai River called Kakny in the Dena'ina language, is a river in the Kenai Peninsula of south central Alaska. It runs westward from Kenai Lake in the Kenai Mountains, through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and Skilak Lake to its outlet into the Cook Inlet of the Pacific Ocean near Kenai...
in 1848, but no gold was produced. Gold mining started in 1870 from placers southeast of Juneau, Alaska
Juneau, Alaska
The City and Borough of Juneau is a unified municipality located on the Gastineau Channel in the panhandle of the U.S. state of Alaska. It has been the capital of Alaska since 1906, when the government of the then-District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U.S. Congress in 1900...
.
Gold is found and has been mined throughout Alaska; except in the vast swamps of the Yukon Flats, and along the North Slope
Alaska North Slope
The Alaska North Slope is the region of the U.S. state of Alaska located on the northern slope of the Brooks Range along the coast of two marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, the Chukchi Sea being on the western side of Point Barrow, and the Beaufort Sea on the eastern.The region contains the...
between the Brooks Range
Brooks Range
The Brooks Range is a mountain range in far northern North America. It stretches from west to east across northern Alaska and into Canada's Yukon Territory, a total distance of about 1100 km . The mountains top out at over 2,700 m . The range is believed to be approximately 126 million years old...
and the Beaufort Sea
Beaufort Sea
The Beaufort Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, west of Canada's Arctic islands. The sea is named after hydrographer Sir Francis Beaufort...
. Areas near Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome are responsible for most of Alaska's historical and current gold production. Nearly all of the large and many of the small placer gold mines currently operating in the US are in Alaska. Six modern large-scale hard rock mines operate in Alaska in 2008; four of those are gold-producing mines (an additional gold mine suspended production in late 2007). There are also some small-scale hard rock gold-mining operations. Alaska currently produces more gold (in 2007: 673,274 troy oz from lode mines, and 53,848 troy oz from placer deposits) than any state except Nevada
Gold mining in Nevada
Gold mining in Nevada, a state of the United States, is a major industry, and one of the largest sources of gold in the world. Nevada currently mines 79% of all the gold in the United States, which is equivalent to in 2009. Total gold production from Nevada recorded from 1835 to 2008 totals ,...
. In 2007, gold accounted for 15% of the mining wealth produced in Alaska. Zinc and lead, mainly from the Red Dog mine
Red Dog mine
The Red Dog mine is a zinc and lead mine located in a remote region of the Arctic, within the boundaries of the Red Dog Mine census-designated place in the Northwest Arctic Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska....
, accounted for 73%; silver, mainly from the Greens Creek mine, accounted for 8%; coal and aggregates accounted for nearly 2% each. Alaska produced a total of 40.3 million troy ounces of gold from 1880 through the end of 2007.
Active mines
The following are active gold-producing mines and advanced lode exploration or development projects.Placer mines
Placer miningPlacer mining
Placer mining is the mining of alluvial deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment....
continues throughout Alaska. In 2007, an estimated 175 placer mines produced 53,848 ounces of gold, an approximately 15% drop in activity and production compared to 2006. All of these operations are seasonal, none employ more than a few dozen people. Many of them are family operations with roots reaching back several generations. One mine, at Nolan Creek, mines frozen gravels by underground methods. A significant portion of current exploration for lode gold in Alaska occurs in placer gold camps.
Large-scale hard rock mines producing gold
- The Greens Creek mine, owned and operated by Hecla MiningHecla MiningHecla Mining is a silver and other precious metals mining company based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The company employs approximately 870 people and owns the Lucky Friday unit in northern Idaho, the San Sebastian unit in the state of Durango, Mexico, and the Greens Creek unit , near Juneau,...
, located on private patented claims and on federal land in the Admiralty mining districtAdmiralty mining districtThe Admiralty mining district is a mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska which consists of Admiralty Island. Most of the gold recovered from the Admiralty district is a by product of silver and base metal mining....
, is primarily a silver-lead-zinc mine, produced 73,000 troy ounces (2.3 tonnes) of gold in 2006 and a similar amount in 2007. - Fort Knox mine, owned and operated by Kinross GoldKinross GoldKinross Gold Corporation is a Canadian-based gold mining company with a gold production guidance of 4.5 to 4.9 million gold ounces by 2015. Kinross owns mines and projects in Canada, the United States, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Russia, Ghana and Mauritania, employing approximately 7,500 people...
on State of Alaska-owned land in the Fairbanks mining districtFairbanks mining districtThe Fairbanks mining district is a gold-mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska. Placer mining began near Fairbanks in July 1902, after Felix Pedro , an Italian immigrant and Tom Gilmore discovered gold in the hills north of the Tanana and Chena Rivers in 1901. Pedro died exactly eight years after...
, produced 333,000 troy ounces (10.3 tonnes) of gold in 2006 and a similar amount in 2007. - Pogo mine, owned and operated by Teck ComincoTeck ComincoTeck Resources Limited known as Teck Cominco until late 2008, is a Canadian mining company. It was formed from the amalgamation of Teck and Cominco in 2001.-History:...
, on State of Alaska-owned land in the Goodpaster district, produced 260,000 troy ounces (8.1 tonnes) of gold in 2007, more than double production in 2006. - Kensington and Jualin; production re-commenced at the long-closed adjacent historical underground gold-in-quartz-veins mines in the Juneau mining districtJuneau mining districtThe Juneau mining district is a gold mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska.In 1880 a local inhabitant, Chief Kowee, revealed to prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris the presence of gold in what is now named Gold Creek in Silver Bow Basin...
in June, 2010. Over $270 million of exploration and construction efforts from 2005 onward, and significant legal battles concerning disposal of mine tailings onto public land led to renewed production. Over 2 million troy ounces of gold resource in 8.8 million tons of ore are reported.
Large-scale hard rock gold mines under development (construction)
- Rock Creek mine, owned and operated by NovaGold ResourcesNovaGold ResourcesNovaGold Resources Inc. is a mineral exploration, development, and mining company. NovaGold has 50% ownership of two of the world’s largest known undeveloped gold and copper-gold deposits...
, on privately owned land in the Nome mining districtNome mining districtThe Nome mining district, also known as the Cape Nome mining district, is a gold mining district in the U.S. state of Alaska. It was discovered in 1898 when Erik Lindblom, Jafet Lindeberg and John Brynteson, the "Three Lucky Swedes" , found placer gold deposits on Anvil Creek and on the Snake...
. Constructed in 2007 and 2008, the mine began producing gold in September 2008, but ceased production almost immediately due to difficulties processing the ore and water-management issues. It is now on care and maintenance pending significant modifications to the mill, which has design flaws.
Advanced gold-bearing hard rock exploration projects of note
- Donlin Creek, in the Kuskokwim Gold Belt, contains an estimated 29.3 million ounces of Proven and Probable gold reserves (calculated at a gold price of $750) and an additional 10 million ounces of gold resource. Donlin is one of the largest known undeveloped gold deposits in the world. If developed according to plans published in spring 2009 it will be one of the largest gold mines in the world. Applications for permits will begin in 2009 and construction could begin as early as 2012 A large and robust series of felsic sills and dikes hosts the gold in association with small-scale quartz (and lesser quartz and/or carbonate) veinlets. The sills intrude a thick sequence (5000+ feet) of non-metamorphosed, folded, graywacke, sandstone, and shale. The deposit occurs on private land owned by native corporations Calista Corporation and The Kuskokwim Corp. Donlin Creek LLC, equally-owned by Barrick GoldBarrick GoldBarrick Gold Corporation is the largest pure gold mining company in the world, with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and four regional business units located in Australia, Africa, North America and South America...
and NovaGold ResourcesNovaGold ResourcesNovaGold Resources Inc. is a mineral exploration, development, and mining company. NovaGold has 50% ownership of two of the world’s largest known undeveloped gold and copper-gold deposits...
, holds a lease on the land and operates the project. - Pebble CopperPebble MinePebble Mine is the common name of an advanced mineral exploration project investigating a very large porphyry copper, gold, and molybdenum mineral deposit in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska, near Lake Iliamna and Lake Clark. The proposal to mine the ore deposit, using large-scale...
, discovered in the mid-1980s, is one of the largest known copper-gold porphyry deposits in the world. It is located on State of Alaska-owned land. The deposit contains measured+indicated+inferred resources of 72-billion pounds of copper, 94-million ounces of gold, and 4.8-billion pounds of molybdenum, within 9.1 billion tonnes of ore. Tens of million of dollars are spent annually on the project, an initial mining plan is expected in 2009, with permitting scheduled for 2010. - Nixon Fork mine in the McGrath Mining District. First exploited in 1907, this underground operation exploits high-grade gold skarn ore bodies along contacts between Cretaceous granitoid and metamorphosed Paleozoic sediments. The mine, after decades of inactivity, returned to production for several years in the mid-1990s, and again in 2006 and 2007, when a significant variation between actual and predicted headgrades occurred. An updated resource evaluation is pending further work.
- The Niblack prospect, a zincZincZinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
-copperCopperCopper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
-silverSilverSilver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
-goldGoldGold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
VMS deposit on southeastern Prince of Wales Island, in the Ketchikan Mining District. Ore occurs as massive sulfide bodies hosted in a local rhyolite belt within a package of deeply deformed and metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rocks. In the last ten years, significant underground and surface exploration occurred at this early-1900s minesite. A recent estimate reports a near surface indicated resource of 4073 kg of gold, 59,424 kg of silver, 14,810 metric tons of copper, and 30,474 metric tons of zinc contained in 1,424,000 metric tons of ore; and deeper inferred resources of 3,919 kg of gold, 55,295 kg of silver, 31,235 metric tons of copper, and 106,192 metric tons of zinc within 1,893,000 metric tons of ore. Further exploration is planned. - Dozens of other significant exploration efforts for gold, across the state, contributed to the total of over $310 million dollars spent on mineral exploration in Alaska in 2007.
Porcupine district
Over 81,000 ounces of placer gold came from the Porcupine district near Haines. Porcupine Creek, about 20 miles (32.2 km) north of Haines, is the site of a 1898 gold discovery; the creek has been intermittently placer mined ever since. Outside of the Porcupine basin only a few other creeks - Glacier, Nugget and Cottonwood - produced significant gold. The area around Reid Inlet, in modern Glacier Bay National Park and PreserveGlacier Bay National Park and Preserve
Glacier Bay National Park is a national park in Alaska. The area around Glacier Bay in southeastern Alaska was first proclaimed a U.S. National Monument on February 25, 1925. It was changed to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve on Dec. 2, 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation...
, hosted several hard rock gold prospects, including the LeRoy mine, which exploited quartz veins for about 10,000 ounces of gold production. The district, which includes Skagway and Haines
Haines, Alaska
Haines is a census-designated place in Haines Borough, Alaska, United States. As of the 2000 census, the population of the area was 1,811. Haines was formerly a city but no longer has a municipal government...
, is bordered to the north and east by Canada. To the west is the Pacific Ocean and the Chichagof
Chichagof Island
Chichagof Island, or Shee Kaax, is an island in the Alexander Archipelago of the Alaska Panhandle. At long and wide, it has a land area of , making it the fifth largest island in the United States and the 109th largest island in the world. It's coastline measures 742 miles. There was a 2000...
District lies to the south. The Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
series Gold Rush Alaska
Gold Rush Alaska
Gold Rush is a directed and scripted reality television series that airs on Discovery Channel, with reruns also airing on TLC.-Season 1:...
takes place in this region.
Juneau district
In 1880 a local inhabitant, Chief Kowee, revealed to prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris the presence of gold in what is now named Gold Creek in Silver Bow Basin. The city of Juneau was founded there that year. The strike sparked the Juneau gold rush which resulted in the development of many placer and lode mines including the largest, in their time, gold mines in the world: the Treadwell complex of lode mines on Douglas Island (across a narrow sea channel from Juneau) and the AJ lode mine, in Juneau itself.Over 7 million ounces of lode gold and 80,000 ounces of placer gold have been recovered from the Juneau district.
Admiralty district
Most of the gold recovered from the Admiralty mining district (which consists of Admiralty Island) is a by product of silver and base metal mining. The Alaska Empire underground lode mine recovered gold from quartz veins in metamorphic rockMetamorphic rock
Metamorphic rock is the transformation of an existing rock type, the protolith, in a process called metamorphism, which means "change in form". The protolith is subjected to heat and pressure causing profound physical and/or chemical change...
s. Discovered and staked in the 1920s, production of about 20,000 tonnes of 0.25 ounce-per-ton gold ore occurred in the mid-1930s. The Funter Bay underground lode mine produced about 500 thousand tonnes of copper-nickel-cobalt ore, without gold, from a Mesozoic gabbro-norite pipe. No significant placer mining was done on Admiralty. About 500,000 ounces of gold, almost all from the currently-operating Greens Creek lode silver mine, have been recovered from the Admiralty district.
Chichagof district
Approximately 800,000 ounces of gold have come from the Chichagof district. ChichagofChichagof Island
Chichagof Island, or Shee Kaax, is an island in the Alexander Archipelago of the Alaska Panhandle. At long and wide, it has a land area of , making it the fifth largest island in the United States and the 109th largest island in the world. It's coastline measures 742 miles. There was a 2000...
, Yakobi
Yakobi Island
Yakobi Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeastern Alaska, United States. It lies just off the western edge of Chichagof Island, separated from it by Lisianski Inlet and Lisianski Strait...
, Baranof
Baranof Island
Baranof Island, also sometimes called Baranov Island, Shee or Sitka Island, is an island in the northern Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle, in Alaska. The name Baranof was given in 1805 by Imperial Russian Navy captain U. F. Lisianski to honor Alexander Andreyevich Baranov...
and smaller islands comprise the district.
Numerous lode and placer prospects and mines exist in the district. Major production came from underground lode mines exploiting gold-in-quartz veins.
Apex-El Nido mine
The Apex-El Nido produced perhaps 50,000 ounces of gold from a mile of underground workings exploiting polymetallic quartz veins.
Hirst-Chichagof mine
From 1922 to 1933 the Hirst-Chichagof produced 133,000 ounces of gold and 33,000 ounces of silver from polymetallic quartz veins assaying nearly 1 ounce of gold per ton. There are over a mile of underground workings, reaching 2000 feet (609.6 m) below the surface. Significant reserves remain, which have attracted exploration efforts in the 1980s and 1990s.
Chichagof mine
The Chichagof mine opened in 1905 and by 1942 had yielded 660,000 ounces of gold and 195,000 ounces of silver from quartz veins assaying over 1 oz gold per ton. There were several miles of workings on 5 levels. Six shafts reached a maximum of 2750 feet (838.2 m) below sea level.
Between 1981 and 1988 several thousand feet of new workings were dug, and engineering and environmental studies were done, but the project was abandoned.
Petersburg-Sumdum district
15,000 ounces of gold from placers, came from the Petersburg-Sumdum district which consists of; ZaremboZarembo Island
Zarembo Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeastern Alaska, United States. It lies directly south of Mitkof Island and northwest of Etolin Island. To the northwest is Kupreanof Island and to the southwest is Prince of Wales Island. It has a land area of 183.14 sq mi , making it...
, Etolin
Etolin Island
Etolin Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeastern Alaska, USA, at . It is between Prince of Wales Island, to its west, and the Alaska mainland, to its east. It is southwest of Wrangell Island. It was first charted in 1793 by James Johnstone, one of George Vancouver's...
, and Wrangell Island
Wrangell Island
Wrangell Island is in the Alexander Archipelago in the Alaska Panhandle of southeastern Alaska. It is long and 8–23 km wide. It has a land area of , making it the 29th largest island in the United States...
s, and the mainland between the Juneau
Juneau mining district
The Juneau mining district is a gold mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska.In 1880 a local inhabitant, Chief Kowee, revealed to prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris the presence of gold in what is now named Gold Creek in Silver Bow Basin...
and Ketchikan districts. Many small lode deposits were located in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The most significant lode producer was the Sumdum Chief, which was discovered in 1889 and operated until exhausted in 1903. 24,000 ounces of gold were extracted from two quartz veins averaging ore of about 0.39 ounces per ton of both gold and silver. The mine reached a depth of 1200 feet (365.8 m) and had a ten-stamp mill. In Windham Bay, a cluster of mineral claim holdings were consolidated in the 1920s; the Jensen mine was the most productive of these, producing about 50 ounces of gold. Several aerial tramways, thousands of feet long, connected various adits and mills.
Ketchikan district
Approximately 58,000 ounces of lode gold and 4000 ounces of placer gold have come from the KetchikanKetchikan, Alaska
Ketchikan is a city in Ketchikan Gateway Borough, Alaska, United States, the southeasternmost sizable city in that state. With an estimated population of 7,368 in 2010 within the city limits, it is the fifth most populous city in the state....
district, consisting of Dall
Dall Island
Dall Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago off the southeast coast of Alaska, just west of Prince of Wales Island and north of Canadian waters. Its peak elevation is 2,443 feet above sea level. Its land area is 254.02 square miles , making it the 28th largest island in the United States...
, Prince of Wales, Revillagigedo
Revillagigedo Island
Revillagigedo Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago in Ketchikan Gateway Borough of the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Alaska. Running about 89 km north-south and 48 km east-west, it is 2,754.835 km² in area, making it the 12th largest island in the United...
, and smaller islands, as well some mainland, in the southernmost-part of Alaska.
Numerous historical lode mines and prospects for base metals, uranium, rare earth elements (REE's), iron, and platinum group elements (PGE's), as well as gold exist in the Ketchikan district. Major gold production came from underground lode mines exploiting: gold-bearing quartz veins in metamorphic rocks (such as the Gold Standard, Sea Level, Dawson, Golden Fleece, and Goldstream mines); skarns (at the Jumbo and Kassan Peninsula copper-gold mines); zoned mafic-ultramafic plutons, as at the Salt Chuck silver-gold-copper-PGE mine; and VMS deposits such as Niblack.
A high-yielding mine in Ketchikan District is the Golden Fleece Mine, located about 0.2 mile north of the north end of James Lake on Prince of Wales Island, latitude: 55.152179, longitude: -132.056635. The mine was most active from 1901 to 1905.
Chandalar District
The Chandalar district is the area around the upper drainage of the Chandalar RiverChandalar River
The Chandalar River is a river in Alaska. Its peak flow recorded by the USGS was 62,800 cubic feet per second , on June 9, 1968....
, includes some southern foothills of the Brooks Range
Brooks Range
The Brooks Range is a mountain range in far northern North America. It stretches from west to east across northern Alaska and into Canada's Yukon Territory, a total distance of about 1100 km . The mountains top out at over 2,700 m . The range is believed to be approximately 126 million years old...
, and extends to the crest of the Brooks Range. Discovery of placer gold in 1906 was quickly followed by lode discoveries. Most of the placer-producing creeks drain the area of lode mineralization. The district produced about 48,000 ounces of placer gold and 17,000 ounces of lode gold.
Little Squaw Creek
Little Squaw Creek drains an area cut by many auriferous veins. Some of the placers in the basin are exceptionally rich. By 1916 most of the shallow placers were playing out so miners shifted their interest to the placer drift mines (underground operations). The most notable of these is the Little Squaw Bench, including the Mellow Bench. Approximately 29,000 ounces of gold were recovered averaging 1.0 oz/cubic yard of gold in the gravels with spikes of up to 4.6 oz/cubic yard. Some individual nuggets were over 10 ounces. In 2010, gold production resumed with mining of the placer deposits by the Gold Rich Mining Company.
Little Squaw and Mikado lodes
In 1909 to 1915 development and underground gold mining occurred at the Little Squaw, with a few hundred feet of workings built and a few dozen ounces of gold recovered. The nearby Mikado mine enjoyed similar efforts around 1913. In the 1960s , 1970s and 1980s additional work was done. These later efforts probably recovered more than 10,000 ounces of gold.
Significant efforts resumed in 2006, and are ongoing, to explore the Little Squaw placer and lode deposits.
Koyukuk-Nolan district
The district encompasses the upper Koyukuk RiverKoyukuk River
The Koyukuk River is a principal tributary of the Yukon River, approximately 500 mi long, in northern Alaska in the United States.It drains an area north of the Yukon on the southern side of the Brooks Range...
basin including the Alatna and Kanuti rivers and the village of Bettles. The district extends from the southern flank of the Brooks Range to the northern Ray Mountains
Ray Mountains
The Ray Mountains is a mountain range in central Alaska named for the Ray River, itself named for U.S. Navy Captain Patrick Henry Ray, who established a meteorological station in Barrow, Alaska in 1881. The mountains are located within the Yukon-Tanana Uplands, an area of low mountain ranges that...
, and is directly west of the Chandalar district. Much of the district is now in Gates of the Arctic National Park. Gold was discovered in placer deposits in the district in 1901. About 350,000 ounces of placer gold have been won from the area, perhaps 85% of it from near Wiseman
Wiseman
-People:* Bob Wiseman, Canadian musician, filmmaker, singer-songwriter, actor* Chad Wiseman, Canadian ice hockey player* Clarence Wiseman, 10th General of The Salvation Army* Danny Wiseman, American professional bowler...
. Mining continues today in the district.
Much of the district is underlain by bedded Paleozoic rocks, a schist belt extends along the southern foothills of the Brooks Range. Cretaceous plutons intrude metamorphic rocks in the southern part of the district. Pleistocene ice sheets from the Brooks Range and cirque glaciers in the Ray Mountains covered much of the higher elevations. Glaciers are now restricted to the highest cirques of the Brooks Range.
Nolan Creek
Miners produced 135,000 ounces of gold from Nolan Creek between 1904 and 1999. Some of the placer gold is mined by underground methods in frozen gravels. A 42-troy ounce nugget, Alaska's twentieth-largest, came from Marys Bench on Nolan Creek. Placer mining activity continues, with a reserve of 114,760 ounces of gold reported in 2000.
Hammond River
Mining occurred on the Hammond River, a tributary of the Koyukuk River, from about 1900 to at least 2000. Exact production is unknown, it is estimated at about 80,000 ounces.
A rich, deep channel was struck beneath the Hammond River in 1912, and during the following 4 years, over 48,000 oz gold were produced, including a 138.8-oz nugget. (Pringel, 1921; T.K. Bundtzen, written communication, 1999)
Much of the gold was coarse: the third (146 troy oz.), fourth (139 troy oz.), 14th (61 troy ounces), and 17th (55 troy ounces) largest gold nuggets in Alaska were found on the Hammond River between Discovery claim and Vermont Creek a distance of 4 miles.
Only the richest ground was possible to mine as the Hammond River was one of the most remote placer districts in North America until 1975 when the Dalton Highway for the Alaskan Pipeline project was completed.
Historically the Hammond River is one of the largest gold producers in the Koyukuk district. Gold was discovered on the Hammond River, just above the lower canyon mouth, about 2 miles upstream from the Koyukuk River. In the early years, attempts were made to mine the modern stream gravels. At the mouth of Swift Creek a wing dam was built to divert the river for mining, but numerous cobbles and small boulders made the venture unprofitable. Approximately 500 ounces was recovered with pick and shovels in Summer of 1902. Later, shafts sunk 66 feet to bedrock at the discovery site were reported to show the presence of gold in paying quantities. The majority of the gold production on the Hammond came out of the deep channel as early miners were unable to deal with the water and cobbles in the present river channel.
The Hammond River contains deep channel, bench, and modern stream placers.
Much of the Hammond River gold is of the coarse nugget variety. Several nuggets weighing from 45 to 59 oz were found in the early days. In 1914 a 138.8 oz nugget (fourth largest in Alaska) was found in a mud-filled crack on bedrock near Gold Bottom Gulch (Engineering and Mining Journal, 1915, p. 1021; T. Bundzten, personal communication, 1999).
In 1914,on No. 4 Above, Hammond River (Goldbottom Gulch), J. C. Kinney and partners picked up nuggets from bedrock valued at about $20,000; one nugget, the second largest ever found in Alaska, was worth $2600. The rest of the dump when sluiced yielded a little less than the value of the "pickings." (Engineering and Mining Journal, 1914, p. 1062 Vol. 98 No. 24. (Gold at $20.00 per ounce.)
Placers on Slisco bench, an ancient buried channel of Hammond River near Vermont Creek on the west side of the present Hammond River contain a measured resource of 31,099 oz gold with grades of up to 0.3 oz/cy. Inferred resources on the same bench range from 50,000 to 150,000 oz. (2002) . Other benches of Hammond River between Discovery Claim and Slisco Bench have similar potential but have not been systematically prospected with modern technology.
U.S. Department of Interior BLM-Alaska Technical Report 50
Mineral Investigations in the Koyukuk Mining
District, Northern Alaska
Maddren USGS Bulletin 532 1913
Hughes District
The Hughes district includes the basin of the lower Koyukuk River (below the Kanuti). Much of the area is a swampy, lake-studded lowland, from which rises rounded hills to elevations of several thousand feet.Placer mines in the Zane Hills on Bear Creek, a tributary of the Hogatza River, are the biggest source of gold from the district. Placer deposits clustered near the village of Hughes and Indian Mountain are the other significant source of placer gold from the district. The district has produced about 245,000 ounces, with traces of copper, lead, zinc, tin, silver and platinum.
Melozitna District
On the northern side of the Yukon River, between the Melotizna and Ray rivers, most of the district is rolling ridges with upmost elevations over 5000 feet (1,524 m), where now-gone Pleistocene cirque glaciers developed. Placer gold was discovered in 1907, but activity was sporadic and poorly recorded. About 10,000 ounces of gold, with significant by-product tin, was won from placer deposits by the 1960s.Illinois Creek Mine
The mine is located in the remote Kaiyuh Mountains of west-central Alaska about 40 miles (64.4 km) south of the Yukon River
Yukon River
The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. The source of the river is located in British Columbia, Canada. The next portion lies in, and gives its name to Yukon Territory. The lower half of the river lies in the U.S. state of Alaska. The river is long and empties into...
village of Galena
Galena, Alaska
Galena is the largest city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. At the 2000 census the population was 675.-History:...
. The Illinois Creek lode gold-silver mine exploited a shear-hosted gold deposit which was partly expressed as color anomalies visible from aircraft. Located on State of Alaska land, it was discovered in the 1980s. In February 1996 a feasibility study was completed, with the deposit estimated to contain about 350,000 ounces of gold and 2,500,000 ounces of silver. Construction began the next month, but was halted by winter conditions in November. By then, with the development uncompleted and six-million more than the total mine construction-and-operating budget of 26-million dollars already spent, USMX, the mining company that owned Illinois Creek, was millions of dollars in arrears on invoices and short on cash. New financing allowed construction to resume in 1997; the mine poured its first gold in June 1997. In 1998 the company entered bankruptcy. In 1999 the State of Alaska assumed control of the mine. A mine-to-reclaim arrangement between the state and a newly-involved mining contractor resulted in the reclamation and closure of the mine by 2005. A bond is in place to provide environmental monitoring for 30 years.
Ruby-Poorman District
The Ruby-Poorman District produced nearly a half million ounces of gold, all from placer mines. Some of the largest gold nuggets found in Alaska are from the district, which lies south of the Yukon River. The placers are mostly deeply buried, and most were originally worked with shafts and drifts. Dozens of creeks in the district were mined, many more bear gold prospects. CassiteriteCassiterite
Cassiterite is a tin oxide mineral, SnO2. It is generally opaque, but it is translucent in thin crystals. Its luster and multiple crystal faces produce a desirable gem...
, platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
, scheelite
Scheelite
Scheelite is a calcium tungstate mineral with the chemical formula CaWO4. It is an important ore of tungsten. Well-formed crystals are sought by collectors and are occasionally fashioned into gemstones when suitably free of flaws...
, allanite
Allanite
Allanite is a sorosilicate group of minerals within the broader epidote group that contain a significant amount of rare earth elements. The mineral occurs mainly in metamorphosed clay rich sediments and felsic igneous rocks...
, and native bismuth
Bismuth
Bismuth is a chemical element with symbol Bi and atomic number 83. Bismuth, a trivalent poor metal, chemically resembles arsenic and antimony. Elemental bismuth may occur naturally uncombined, although its sulfide and oxide form important commercial ores. The free element is 86% as dense as lead...
have been recovered along with gold from placer mines in the district. Alaska's largest gold nugget, 294.1 troy ounces, was found in the Ruby District in 1998 by miner Barry Clay. For pictures of the nugget see the swiftcreekmine web site.
Hot Springs District
This district, which produced about 576,000 ounces, includes placer mines at Manley and Eureka.Rampart district
Nearly 200,000 ounces of gold was recovered from placer mines in the district.Circle district
Over 1 million ounces of gold have been recovered from placer deposits in the Circle district. Uplands with thousands of feet of generally mild relief are underlain by a complex metamorphic terraneTerrane
A terrane in geology is short-hand term for a tectonostratigraphic terrane, which is a fragment of crustal material formed on, or broken off from, one tectonic plate and accreted or "sutured" to crust lying on another plate...
intruded by a broad range of igneous rocks. Many gold occurrences are known, but no gold lodes are identified. Placer mining has been reported for every year since 1894.
Eagle district
This small district includes the village of Eagle on the Yukon River, and borders Canada. About 50,000 ounces of gold, all from placer deposits, has been recovered from the district since gold was discovered in 1895 on American Creek and the Seventy-mile River.Tolovana-Livengood district
LivengoodLivengood, Alaska
Livengood is a census-designated place in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 29 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Livengood is located at ....
is about 50 miles (80.5 km) northwest of Fairbanks
Fairbanks, Alaska
Fairbanks is a home rule city in and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska, and second largest in the state behind Anchorage...
on the Dalton Highway
Dalton Highway
The James W. Dalton Highway, usually Dalton Highway is a 414-mile road in Alaska. It begins at the Elliott Highway, north of Fairbanks, and ends at Deadhorse near the Arctic Ocean and the Prudhoe Bay oil fields...
. In July, 1914 Jay Livengood and N.R. Hudson discovered gold on Livengood Creek. Hundreds of people arrived in the district the following winter. A post office existed at Livengood from 1915 to 1957. Only a few dozen people live at Livengood today, some only seasonally. A variety of creeks in the district were mined. Many gold lode occurrences are known and exploration continues for open pittable lode deposits. Over 500,000 ounces of gold have been recovered from placers in the district.
Early development and production was from relatively shallow pay in tributaries of Livengood Creek. By 1939, large, deeply buried (80 to 110 feet), thawed, bench placer deposits on the northwest limit of Livengood Creek valley were defined. The pay streak varied from 100 to 1000 feet (304.8 m) wide and was at least 6 miles (9.7 km) long. Gold reserves of over 1 million ounces were defined by drilling prior to 1940. A dredge operated near the town of Livengood in 1940, 1946 and probably other years.
Alaska's 12th-largest (73 troy ounces) and 16th-largest (56 troy ounces) nuggets were found in the district, on Dome Creek.
Fairbanks district
Placer mining began near FairbanksFairbanks, Alaska
Fairbanks is a home rule city in and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska, and second largest in the state behind Anchorage...
in July 1902, after Felix Pedro
Felix Pedro
Felice Pedroni , known best to Americans by his Hispanicized alias Felix Pedro, was an Italian immigrant whose discovery of gold in Interior Alaska marked the beginning of the 1902 Fairbanks Gold Rush.-Early life:...
(real name Felice Pedroni), an Italian immigrant and Tom Gilmore discovered gold in the hills north of the Tanana and Chena Rivers in 1901. The district was and is a major producer of gold from both placer and lode deposits: placers have produced over 8 million troy ounces (250 tonnes) of gold, lodes have yielded over 4 million ounces.
Goodpaster district
Only a few thousand ounces of gold from placer mines, and a few hundred ounces from lode gold mines were produced from the Goodpaster district before the discovery of Pogo. The district is west of the Fairbanks and south of the Circle district.Pogo mine (operating)
The recently discovered and built Pogo mine is located on a hillside above the Goodpaster River, about 85 miles (136.8 km) south-east of Fairbanks, Alaska. The deposit was discovered in 1994 by the Sumitomo companies on land owned by the State of Alaska. A private 49 miles (78.9 km) gravel road and power line now connects the mine to the Richardson Highway corridor near Delta Junction. The mine is an underground operation that exploits two large (several-meters thick) and high-grade (averaging almost 0.5 ounces of gold per ton of ore) gold-bearing quartz veins. Approximately half of the tailings are returned underground, the rest are disposed of on the surface. The mine was developed, and originally operated, by Teck-Cominco, the same company operating the world's largest zinc mine; the Red Dog mine
Red Dog mine
The Red Dog mine is a zinc and lead mine located in a remote region of the Arctic, within the boundaries of the Red Dog Mine census-designated place in the Northwest Arctic Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska....
in northwest Alaska. Sumitomo Metal Mining (a non-operating partner and part-owner of the Pogo deposit since discovery) bought Teck-Cominco's share of the mine in 2009 and is now the operator. The first gold dore bar at Pogo was poured on February 12, 2006. 190 people were employed at the mine in 2007.
In early 2007 Pogo contained reserves of 5.6 million ounces of gold in ore grading 0.41 opt gold. Projected mine life is ten years.
Fortymile district
The 1886 discovery of gold on Franklin's Bar on the Fortymile RiverFortymile River
The Fortymile River is a river in Alaska and the Yukon. Prior to the Klondike Gold Rush, there was considerable mining activity along this tributary of the Yukon River. In the 1970s, there was an asbestos mine at Clinton Creek in the Yukon. When gold was discovered on the Fortymille River in 1886,...
touched off Interior Alaska's first gold rush
Gold rush
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...
. The mining boom ushered in a wave of settlement that forever changed the place, not only for its new residents but for the Athabascan Indians who occupied this region long before them. The miners who prospected nearly every creek in the region eventually extracted more than a half-million ounces of gold from the Fortymile, including a 56.8 troy ounce nugget, Alaska's 15th-largest. Reports of starvation and lawlessness among the miners resulted in the Army sending troops to the Eagle
Eagle
Eagles are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just two species can be found in the United States and Canada, nine more in...
area to provide law enforcement in 1899. Soldiers soon began work on a trail from Valdez
Valdez
Valdés is a surname of Asturian origin.Both in North and South America the spelling Valdez is very common.The exact meaning of "Valdés" is not clear...
to Eagle.
Gold was first discovered in the Chicken Creek drainage in 1896, 10 years after the gold discovery on the Fortymile River. The F.E. Company, a subsidiary of the U.S. Smelting Refining & Mining Co., acquired most of the claims during the 1940s and dredged 2 miles (3.2 km) of the creek from 1959 to 1967. Since then, several family operations have mined on the creek. It is estimated that over 100,000 ounces of gold has been produced from the Chicken Creek drainage.
The beginning of the end of the Fortymile Gold Rush came in August 1896 when George Carmack
George Carmack
George Washington Carmack was a Contra Costa County, California-born prospector in the Yukon. He was originally credited with the discovery of gold that set off the Klondike Gold Rush on August 16, 1896...
reported the first gold strike along the Klondike River
Klondike River
The Klondike River is a tributary of the Yukon River in Canada that gave its name to the Klondike Gold Rush. The Klondike River has its source in the Ogilvie Mountains and flows into the Yukon River at Dawson City....
in Canada. Within a few years the once-booming towns in the Fortymile region were abandoned and forgotten. Some of the original Fortymile miners returned to the area after the Klondike Gold Rush
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
passed. From 1887–1890 the Upper Yukon region was the richest and most productive mining area in the region. During those three years the area produced 1,200,000 ounces of gold, accounting for 5 percent of Alaska's total gold production.
Chisana-White River district
Gold production from this area is balanced between 78,000 ounces of placer and 66,000 ounces of lode gold. Directly south of the Fortymile district, the Chisana district includes headwaters of the Nabesna and White rivers, and tributaries of the Tanana RiverTanana River
The Tanana River is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon tene no, tenene, literally "trail river"....
; it includes parts of the Wrangell Mountains
Wrangell Mountains
The Wrangell Mountains are a high mountain range of eastern Alaska in the United States. Much of the range is included in Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve. The Wrangell Mountains are almost entirely volcanic in origin, and they include the second and third highest volcanoes in the...
and the Alaska Range
Alaska Range
The Alaska Range is a relatively narrow, 650-km-long mountain range in the southcentral region of the U.S. state of Alaska, from Lake Clark at its southwest end to the White River in Canada's Yukon Territory in the southeast...
. Difficulties of location, lack of water, and small deposit size limited placer activity.
The Nabesna underground lode mine produced gold-copper-silver ore between 1930 and WWII.
Kantishna district
The Kantishna Gold Rush began soon after The Nome Nugget printed the headline “FOUND HIGH GRADE GOLD” on September 9, 1903. Located on the north flanks of Denali (Mt. McKinley), the District was a hard place to operate a mine. Nevertheless, some of the largest gold nuggets found in Alaska have been found in the area, including the 9th largest (92 troy ounces). 92,000 ounces of placer gold and 8000 ounces of gold from lode mines has come from the district. Today, the district is located within Denali National Park and PreserveDenali National Park and Preserve
Denali National Park and Preserve is located in Interior Alaska and contains Denali , the highest mountain in North America. The park and preserve together cover 9,492 mi² .The longest glacier is the Kalhiltna glacier....
.
Kuskokwim Gold Belt
The Kuskokwim Gold Belt (KGB, also known as the Kuskokwim Mineral Belt) is a broad loosely geologically and geographically defined swath of country arcing for approximately 300 miles (482.8 km) across southwest Alaska. It lies northwest of the Alaska Range and is roughly centered on the Kuskokwim RiverKuskokwim River
The Kuskokwim River or Kusko River is a river, long, in Southwest Alaska in the United States. It is the ninth largest river in the United States by average discharge volume at its mouth and seventeenth largest by basin drainage area.The river provides the principal drainage for an area of the...
basin. Geologically it is dominated by flysch
Flysch
Flysch is a sequence of sedimentary rocks that is deposited in a deep marine facies in the foreland basin of a developing orogen. Flysch is typically deposited during an early stage of the orogenesis. When the orogen evolves the foreland basin becomes shallower and molasse is deposited on top of...
of Cretaceous-age Kuskokwim Group sediments and a variety of igneous rocks. It also includes a variety of exotic terranes. In 1913, Alfred H. Brooks
Alfred Hulse Brooks
Alfred Hulse Brooks was an American Geologist and served as chief geologist for Alaska for the United States Geological Survey from 1903 to 1924. He was a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan and graduated from Harvard University in 1894...
described it as, "a more or less broken belt of gold-bearing rocks which stretches northeastward from Goodnews Bay parallel to the lower course of the Kuskokwim, toward the Iditarod District, and a number of streams traversing this belt carry auriferous gravels." The KGB lies mostly within the southwestern part of the Tintina Gold Province or "Golden Arch" which lies roughly between the Denali-Farewell
Denali Fault
The Denali Fault is a major intracontinental dextral strike-slip fault in western North America, extending from northwestern British Columbia, Canada to the U.S. state of central Alaska. It was the main fault along which the 2002 Denali earthquake occurred, which was measured as a magnitude of 7.9...
and Kaltag-Tintina
Tintina Fault
The Tintina Fault is a large strike-slip fault in western North America, extending from northwestern British Columbia, Canada to the U.S. state of central Alaska. It represents the northern extension of the Rocky Mountain Fault in the northern United States....
fault systems and arcs up from southwest Alaska, through central Alaska, and down across the Yukon Territory to British Columbia.
The KGB includes all or parts of the historic Aniak
Aniak, Alaska
Aniak is a city in the Bethel Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. At the 2000 census the population was 572.-Geography: ....
/Tuluksak
Tuluksak, Alaska
Tuluksak is a census-designated place in Bethel Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 428.-Geography:Tuluksak is located at ....
, Anvik
Anvik, Alaska
Anvik is a city, home to the Deg Hit'an people, in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. The name Anvik, which became the common usage despite multiple names at the time, may have come from early Russian explorers. The native name in the Deg Xinag language is Deloy Ges...
, Bethel
Bethel, Alaska
Bethel is a city located near the west coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, west of Anchorage. Accessible only by air and river, Bethel is the main port on the Kuskokwim River and is an administrative and transportation hub for the 56 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.Bethel is the largest...
, Goodnews Bay
Goodnews Bay, Alaska
Goodnews Bay is a city in Bethel Census Area, Alaska, USA. As of the 2000 census, the population of the city is 230.-Geography:...
, Iditarod
Iditarod, Alaska
Iditarod is an abandoned town in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska.- Geography :It is on a horseshoe lake that was once a bend in the Iditarod River, northwest of Flat, ultimately flowing into the Yukon river.- History :...
-Flat
Flat, Alaska
Flat is a census-designated place in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the population of the CDP was 0.- History :...
, Innoko, Marshall
Marshall, Alaska
Marshall is a city in Wade Hampton Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 349.-Geography:Marshall is located at ....
, McGrath
McGrath, Alaska
As of the census of 2000, there were 401 people, 145 households, and 99 families residing in the city. The population density was 8.2 people per square mile . There were 213 housing units at an average density of 4.4 per square mile...
, Ruby
Ruby, Alaska
Ruby is a city in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 188.-Geography:Ruby is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of ....
, and Tolstoi mining districts, as well as newly-realized gold-rich areas. Over 3.2 million ounces of gold have been recovered from the belt.
The first mineral discovery by the Russians in Alaska (a cinnabar
Cinnabar
Cinnabar or cinnabarite , is the common ore of mercury.-Word origin:The name comes from κινναβαρι , a Greek word most likely applied by Theophrastus to several distinct substances...
-stibnite
Stibnite
Stibnite, sometimes called antimonite, is a sulfide mineral with the formula Sb2S3. This soft grey material crystallizes in an orthorhombic space group. It is the most important source for the metalloid antimony...
deposit) occurred in the Aniak district in 1838. Pay gold was found in 1901 on tributaries of the Kuskokwim River in the Aniak district.
Marshall-Anvik District
The Marshall and Anvik districts produced about 124,000 ounces of gold and minor amounts of platinum, mainly from Wilson Creek.The district has the Bering Sea to the west, the Yukon River to the south, and the Iditarod and Kaiyuh districts to the east.
Aniak District
About 220,000 ounces of gold produced, mainly from the Tuluksuk River (where the town of Nyac is located) and Crooked Creek basins and with lesser production from Wattamuse and other creeks scattered around the district. Mining continues at present, but reserves are not known. Cinnabar (mercury sulfide) occurs in many of the placer mines in this district, most notably at Cinnabar Creek.Donlin Creek (feasibility stage)
Placer mining began on benches and tributaries on the east side of Crooked Creek and its tributary Donlin Creek in 1910; a family-scale placer-mining operation continues today. Granitic dike swarms cutting the shales and sandstones of the Kuskokwim Group rocks in the hills east of upper Crooked Creek were recognized by USGS geologists in 1915 as the probable source of the placer gold.
In the 1970s Calista Corporation, an Alaska Native Corporation, as part of its land grant under ANSCA selected the land east of Crooked Creek, based on its mineral potential. In 1986 modern hardrock exploration of the Donlin area began with WestGold's efforts, which were abandoned after two years, due not to the lack of gold, but to the refractory (technically difficult to extract from the rock) nature of the gold. PlacerDome signed a lease with Calista and began exploration at Donlin in 1995. That effort continues today, having evolved to a 50:50 partnership between Barrick Gold
Barrick Gold
Barrick Gold Corporation is the largest pure gold mining company in the world, with its headquarters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and four regional business units located in Australia, Africa, North America and South America...
and NovaGold Resources
NovaGold Resources
NovaGold Resources Inc. is a mineral exploration, development, and mining company. NovaGold has 50% ownership of two of the world’s largest known undeveloped gold and copper-gold deposits...
, in cooperation with Calista, the landowner. Over 150 million dollars have been expended on exploration, engineering, and environmental studies.
If eventually exploited, the mine will be an open pit several miles wide. Latest estimates (April 2009) report that Donlin contains 29.3 million ounces of proven and probable gold reserves (calculated at a gold price of $750) and an additional 10 million ounces of gold resource. The gold occurs within the crystal lattice of arsenopyrite associated with other metal sulfides in veins, veinlets, and disseminations mainly in the felsic dikes, but also in less common altered mafic dikes and in the sediments.
Iditarod District
The Iditarod district lies between the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers: the Aniak district abuts it to the south. A gold rush followed the discovery of gold on Otter Creek in 1909. Over 1.5 million ounces of placer gold and a few thousand ounces of lode gold have been recovered from the Iditarod area, making it one of the more important gold-mining districts in Alaska. Much of the gold-producing ground in the district was consolidated by the Morgan-GuggenheimGuggenheim family
The Guggenheim family is an American family, of Swiss Jewish ancestry. Beginning with Meyer Guggenheim, who arrived in America in 1847, the family were known for their global successes in mining and smelting . During the 19th century, the family possessed one of the largest fortunes in the world...
consortium.
Tolstoi District
The drainage basin of Tolstoi Creek, a north-flowing tributary of the Dishna, roughly defines the district. The district lies between the Iditarod and Innoko districts. Placer gold and platinum were discovered by drifting in frozen gravels 35 feet deep on Boob Creek in the winter of 1915-1916. A gold rush occurred in the district the following winter. Historic production of 11,000 ounces of gold, as well as some byproduct platinum, is recorded for the district.
Innoko District
The Aniak district lies to the south, the Tolstoi district to the west. Almost 3/4 million ounces of placer gold has been won from Innoko River and its tribuaries in the district. Lode gold production of 150 ounces is also recorded. Cripple, Colorado, Yankee, Ganes, Ophir, and Little Creeks had prominent placer mines: a third of the districts production came from Ganes Creek. Gold-bearing porphyritic intrusive rocks adjacent to the Ganes Creek and Colorado Creek placers are similar in composition and age to the dike swarms at 29-million ounce Donlin Creek.Ganes Creek
The property is located approximately 40 km west of McGrath, and 440 km northwest of Anchorage. Ganes is famous for producing spectacular gold nuggets including the 5th (122 troy ounces) and 13th-largest (62.5 troy ounce) in Alaska. The presence of cobble-size quartz with sulfide boxwork and coarse gold suggest that the placer gold is primary, originating from bedrock sources. Historic production figures from Ganes Creek are in excess of 250,000 oz. gold; an additional estimated resource of 736,000 oz. of placer gold exists on patented claims.
McGrath-McKinley district
Almost 200,000 ounces of lode gold and over 130,000 ounces of placer gold has come from the district. The district lies on the northeast side of the Aniak district.The Nixon Fork mine (operation suspended)
The Nixon Fork mine is an underground lode gold-copper mine located 32 miles (51.5 km) northeast of McGrath, Alaska
McGrath, Alaska
As of the census of 2000, there were 401 people, 145 households, and 99 families residing in the city. The population density was 8.2 people per square mile . There were 213 housing units at an average density of 4.4 per square mile...
. Placer gold was discovered nearby in 1917, by 1918 hardrock mining was underway, and continued intermittently until 1964. Ore consists of shoots of massive sulfides and native gold found with skarns along the contact of sedimentary rocks and the Mystery Creek quartz monzonite stock.The mine was reopened for exploration, permitted, and developed by Nevada Goldfields, Inc. in 1995 and operated until 1999. In 2005 resource and exploration development resumed. Gold production occurred in 2006 and 2007, production is currently suspended. Production has totaled 187,000 ounces of gold, 2,190,000 pounds of copper, and at least 11,000 ounces of silver. Two small ore bodies have proven and probable reserves of approximately 126,400 tonnes, containing 133,730 ounces of gold. An additional 116,000 tonnes of existing mill tailings are reported to contain 30,200 ounces of gold.
Goodnews Bay District
The district is in extreme southwestern Alaska, and borders the Bering SeaBering Sea
The Bering Sea is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean. It comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelves....
. About 600,000 ounces of platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
(plus some iridium
Iridium
Iridium is the chemical element with atomic number 77, and is represented by the symbol Ir. A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum family, iridium is the second-densest element and is the most corrosion-resistant metal, even at temperatures as high as 2000 °C...
, osmium
Osmium
Osmium is a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76. Osmium is a hard, brittle, blue-gray or blue-blacktransition metal in the platinum family, and is the densest natural element. Osmium is twice as dense as lead. The density of osmium is , slightly greater than that of iridium,...
, ruthenium
Ruthenium
Ruthenium is a chemical element with symbol Ru and atomic number 44. It is a rare transition metal belonging to the platinum group of the periodic table. Like the other metals of the platinum group, ruthenium is inert to most chemicals. The Russian scientist Karl Ernst Claus discovered the element...
, palladium
Palladium
Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired...
, and rhenium
Rhenium
Rhenium is a chemical element with the symbol Re and atomic number 75. It is a silvery-white, heavy, third-row transition metal in group 7 of the periodic table. With an average concentration of 1 part per billion , rhenium is one of the rarest elements in the Earth's crust. The free element has...
) and 27,000 ounces of gold were won from placer deposits in the Salmon River
Salmon River
-United States:There are as many as 17 Salmon Rivers in the United States, the largest of which is:*Salmon River , known as the River of No ReturnOthers include:*Salmon River , Hyder, Alaska*Salmon River...
from 1934 to 1976. Present reserves are unknown, but are the subject of ongoing exploration. The source of the platinum-group elements appears to be in the Red Mountain
Red Mountain
-Canada:* Red Mountain , a mountain near Rossland, British Columbia** Red Mountain Resort, a ski resort on Red Mountain in Rossland, also known as Red Resort* Mount Price, a volcano in British Columbia, Canada formerly known as Red Mountain...
and Susie Mountain ultramafic rocks. Extensive geochemical and geophysical surveys during the past several years have identified areas with as much as 0.1 ounce per ton platinum in the soils, but no reserve has been demonstrated.
Seward Peninsula
Surveyors belonging to the 1865 Count Bendeleben expedition exploring a route across Siberia, the Bering Sea, and Alaska for a communications cable reported gold in the Fish River area of the Seward Peninsula. But it was not until the 1898 $1500-to-the-pan strike on Anvil Creek that gold-seekers came to the region.Nome (Cape Nome) district
Placer gold deposits on Anvil Creek and on the Snake River, a few miles from the future site of NomeNome, Alaska
Nome is a city in the Nome Census Area in the Unorganized Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska, located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. According to the 2010 Census, the city population was 3,598. Nome was incorporated on April 9, 1901, and was once the...
, were discovered in 1898 by Jafet Lindeberg
Jafet Lindeberg
Jafet Lindeberg was a gold prospector and co-founder of the city of Nome, Alaska.-Background:Jafet Lindeberg was born in Kvænangen, Troms county, in Norway. In his youth, he tried prospecting for gold in northern Norway. Lindeberg's father, Isak, was a farmer and fisherman...
, Erik Lindblom
Erik Lindblom
Erik O. Lindblom was one of the “Three Lucky Swedes” who discovered gold in the Nome mining district.-Background:Erik Olof Lindblom was born in Dalarna, Sweden, the son of Olof Lindblom and Brita Lindblom. Lindblom's father was a respected land owner and school master in Sweden...
and John Brynteson
John Brynteson
John Brynteson was one the "The Lucky Swedes" who founded and developed the Nome mining district.-Background:...
, the "Three Lucky Swedes". Word of the strike caused a major gold rush to Nome
Nome Gold Rush
-Beach:Claim jumping was mostly a problem before the beach gold was found, since it could not be claimed and there was plenty of it. As a matter of fact, the beach gold seems to have been more important than the claimed gold in the creeks. The mining of Nome beach is a good example of gold rushes...
in the spring of 1899. Construction of a new hardrock gold mine at Rock Creek was completed, and start-up procedures initiated in late 2008. Efforts at the new mine are suspended due to mill design inadequacies and difficulties meeting regulatory requirements. NovaGold's Rock Creek project includes the Rock Creek mine and mill complex seven miles (11 km) north of Nome, and eventual additional millfeed from the historic underground Big Hurrah mine site 42 miles (67.6 km) east. Over 3.6 million ounces of gold have been recovered from the Nome district, almost all of it from placer deposits.
Council-Solomon District
Over a million ounces of gold are reported recovered from the district.Fairhaven Inmachuk District
The Fairhaven-Inmachuk district lies north of the Solomon District and extends north to Kotzebue Sound of the Chukchi Sea. The district (including Candle) produced about 600,000 ounces of gold with minor amounts of chromiumChromium
Chromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...
, copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
, platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
, bismuth
Bismuth
Bismuth is a chemical element with symbol Bi and atomic number 83. Bismuth, a trivalent poor metal, chemically resembles arsenic and antimony. Elemental bismuth may occur naturally uncombined, although its sulfide and oxide form important commercial ores. The free element is 86% as dense as lead...
, tungsten
Tungsten
Tungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...
, mercury
Cinnabar
Cinnabar or cinnabarite , is the common ore of mercury.-Word origin:The name comes from κινναβαρι , a Greek word most likely applied by Theophrastus to several distinct substances...
, molybdenum
Molybdenum
Molybdenum , is a Group 6 chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The name is from Neo-Latin Molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek , meaning lead, itself proposed as a loanword from Anatolian Luvian and Lydian languages, since its ores were confused with lead ores...
, silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
, and rare-earth elements.
Kougarok district
The district is the central part of the Seward Peninsula, draining into the Imruck Basin. Gold was discovered in 1900 and production from placer mines continues to this day. 177,000 ounces of gold have been recovered from the Kougarok district.Koyuk district
84,000 ounces of placer gold came from the district, the southeastern part of the Seward Peninsula. Major producers were; the Ungalik River and its tributary, Bonanza Creek, which produced significant by-product tin, and Dime Creek, which also produced significant platinum. The district encompasses the basins of the KoyukKoyuk River
The Koyuk River is a river on the Seward Peninsula of western Alaska. The river originates in the interior of the peninsula, at the Lost Jim Lava Flow of the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, where it flows southeast towards the mouth of Norton Bay. The native village of Koyuk is located at...
, Inglutalik, Ungalik, and Shaktoolik Rivers, all draining into northeastern Norton Sound
Norton Sound
Norton Sound is an inlet of the Bering Sea on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, south of the Seward Peninsula. It is about 240 km long and 200 km wide. The Yukon River delta forms a portion of the south shore and water from the Yukon influences this body of water...
.
Port Clarence district
Mainly a tin district, the westernmost Seward Peninsula, 42,000 ounces of placer gold have been recovered, much of it as a by-product of tin mining.Resurrection Creek
Resurrection Creek was the site of Alaska's first gold rush over a century ago, and placer mining continues today. The Resurrection Creek watershed drains 161 square miles (417 km²) on the north side of the Kenai Peninsula, and the community of Hope, AlaskaHope, Alaska
Hope is a census-designated place in Kenai Peninsula Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. As of the 2000 census the population was 137.-Geography:Hope is located at...
is located at the mouth of Resurrection Creek. Charles Miller located the first claim on Resurrection Creek; then leased it to others for working. By 1893, about a dozen miners were working claims on Resurrection Creek. In
1894, more claims were established on Resurrection Creek.
Valdez Creek
Gold was discovered near Valdez Creek on August 15, 1903. Valdez Creek, a tributary of the Susitna RiverSusitna River
The Susitna River is a long river in the Southcentral Alaska. It is the 15th largest river in the United States of America, ranked by average discharge volume at its mouth. The river stretches from the Susitna Glacier to Cook Inlet....
, is located in central Alaska northeast of milepost 81 on the Denali Highway
Denali Highway
Denali Highway is a lightly traveled, mostly gravel highway in the U.S. state of Alaska. It leads from Paxson on the Richardson Highway to Cantwell on the Parks Highway. Opened in 1957, it was the first road access to Denali National Park...
. A 52-troy ounce nugget (Alaska's 18th-largest) came from Lucky Gulch, a tributary of Valdez Creek. Cambior's Valdez Creek Mine recovered over 75,000 ounces of gold annually, making it the largest placer
operation in North America in 1992. Produced 459,162 ounces of gold from 1984 to 1995. Substantial reserves remain upstream of the active mine. The mine has been shut down and the site reclaimed, but other small-scale placer and lode deposits remain nearby.
Chulitna-Yentna Mineral Belt
The Chulitna-Yentna mineral belt extends northeastward for 100 miles (160.9 km) or more along the southern flank of the west-central Alaska Range. The belt shares tectonic or compositional features comparable with some well-known mineral belts of the western Cordillera, including the Juneau gold belt.Golden Zone Mine
Golden Zone Mine. (Copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
, silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
, arsenic
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As, atomic number 33 and relative atomic mass 74.92. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in conjunction with sulfur and metals, and also as a pure elemental crystal. It was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250.Arsenic is a metalloid...
, zinc
Zinc
Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
). Pipe-like body produced 1,581 ounces of gold, 8,617 ounces of silver, and 21 tons of copper. Recent work indicates reserves of the Pipe, Bunkhouse and Copper King deposits as 13.3 million tons grading 0.095 ounces per ton of gold.
Yentna Cache-Creek District
GoldGold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
was discovered in the Yentna District (also known as the Cache Creek District) of the upper Susitna Valley in 1898, soon followed by claim staking
Gold placer claim
In the United States, a placer claim grants to the discoveror of valuable minerals contained in loose material such as sand or gravel the right to mine on public land. Other countries such as Canada, Mexico, and Australia grant similar rights...
. Placer mining
Placer mining
Placer mining is the mining of alluvial deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment....
was reported in the Cache Creek drainage of the Dutch Hills by 1906. Quaternary glaciofluvial deposits, alluvial deposits, and Tertiary conglomeratic white quartz-breccia units have been mined in the Dutch Hills. About 200,000 ounces (6.2 tonnes) of gold has been produced from these placer deposits.
Willow Creek Mining District
Hatcher Pass
Hatcher Pass is a mountain pass through the southwest part of the Talkeetna Mountains, Alaska. It is named after Robert Hatcher, a prospector and miner. The nearest incorporated communities are Palmer and Wasilla, approximately to the south, and Willow, approximately to the west...
District) by Robert Hatcher. Hatcher discovered and staked the first lode gold claim in the Willow Creek Valley in September 1906. Through 2006 the district produced 667-thousand ounces of hard rock gold and 60-thousand ounces of placer gold.
Northwestern Alaska
Drainage basins emptying into Kotzebue Sound of the Bering Sea, including the Noatak RiverNoatak River
The Noatak River is a river in northwestern Alaska. The river's headwaters are on tall Mount Igikpak in the Schwatka Mountains of the Brooks Range in the Gates of the Arctic National Park. The Noatak flows generally westward approximately to the Chukchi Sea at Kotzebue Sound. The river's entire...
and Kobuk River
Kobuk River
The Kobuk River is a river located in the Arctic region of northwestern Alaska in the United States. It is approximately long...
, define the Kiana, Shungnak, Noatak, and Selawick districts. The Noatak district is now within the Noatak National Preserve
Noatak National Preserve
The Noatak National Preserve is an United States National Preserve in northwestern Alaska that was established to protect the Noatak River Basin...
, only tiny gold placer production was recorded from some tributaries near the Noatak headwaters. The Selawick district has one creek where gold was produced by a 2-man operation for ten years during the 1950s and 1960s.
Kobuk River district
In 1898, placer and lode gold were discovered on several of the Kobuk RiverKobuk River
The Kobuk River is a river located in the Arctic region of northwestern Alaska in the United States. It is approximately long...
's tributaries. This gold strike (which by some accounts was false) attracted nearly 2,000 people to Alaska, though only 800 actually stayed to find gold. Although mining has continued to take place in this area, little gold has been discovered.
Kiana district
Placer gold was discovered on Klery Creek in 1909. Almost all of the gold, over 40,000 ounces, from this area has come from tributaries of the Squirrel RiverSquirrel River
The Squirrel River is a river in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is a tributary of the Kobuk River, which it flows into at the city of Kiana....
. Mining has been nearly continuous in this area since discovery. Nephrite jade also occurs in this area.
Shungnak district
All of the 15,000 ounces of gold recovered came from streams draining the Cosmos Hills, a low range along the Kobuk ValleyKobuk River
The Kobuk River is a river located in the Arctic region of northwestern Alaska in the United States. It is approximately long...
. Gold was discovered on Dahl Creek in 1898, which was the major producer. Copper, chromium, cadmium
Cadmium
Cadmium is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. This soft, bluish-white metal is chemically similar to the two other stable metals in group 12, zinc and mercury. Similar to zinc, it prefers oxidation state +2 in most of its compounds and similar to mercury it shows a low...
, and silver, were also recovered with the gold.
Recreational gold mining in Alaska
Recreational mining, i.e., small-scale prospectingProspecting
Prospecting is the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens, and is also known as fossicking.Prospecting is a small-scale form of mineral exploration which is an organised, large scale effort undertaken by mineral resource companies to find commercially viable ore...
and mining using gold pans, sluiceboxes, rockers, suction dredges, and metal detectors, is enjoying a resurgence in Alaska.
Much of the State and Federal-owned land in Alaska is open to recreational mining but there are regulations governing how such mining can be done.
It is illegal to mine on public land that is closed to such activities; or to mine without permission on either public land that is already staked or leased, or privately-owned land.
Popular areas include; areas of Chugach National Forest
Chugach National Forest
-External links:*****...
, areas within Alaska State Parks such as Chugach State Park
Chugach State Park
Chugach State Park is a 495,204-acre state park in the Municipality of Anchorage in the U.S. state of Alaska. Located in the Chugach Mountains just east of the Anchorage Bowl, it is a very popular recreation destination...
, Kenai State Parks, and Independence Mine State Historical Park, and along the Dalton Highway
Dalton Highway
The James W. Dalton Highway, usually Dalton Highway is a 414-mile road in Alaska. It begins at the Elliott Highway, north of Fairbanks, and ends at Deadhorse near the Arctic Ocean and the Prudhoe Bay oil fields...
.
Most of the public-access areas have few or no facilities, such as outhouses, but that's changing, and adds to the feeling of getting in touch with the gold mining roots of the Pioneers.
Perhaps the easiest to get to, and one with camping areas close by, is the Caribou Creek Recreational Mining area. "Physical fitness, health, and age should be considered due to the steepness of the trail." Located on the Glenn Highway
Glenn Highway
-References:* Pasch, A. D., K. C. May. 2001. Taphonomy and paleoenvironment of hadrosaur from the Matanuska Formation in South-Central Alaska. In: Mesozioc Vertebrate Life. Ed.s Tanke, D. H., Carpenter, K., Skrepnick, M. W. Indiana University Press. Pages 219-236.-External links:**...
east of Palmer
Palmer
-People:*Palmer , a medieval European pilgrim to the Holy Land*Palmer , a surname -Places:Antarctica*Palmer Archipelago, group of islands off the northwestern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula...
, the area has fine gold and easy access.
The Hatcher Pass
Hatcher Pass
Hatcher Pass is a mountain pass through the southwest part of the Talkeetna Mountains, Alaska. It is named after Robert Hatcher, a prospector and miner. The nearest incorporated communities are Palmer and Wasilla, approximately to the south, and Willow, approximately to the west...
Public Use Area is located approximately fifteen miles north of Palmer on the Little Susitna River. The area is open to a variety of recreational activities, including recreational mining. A fact sheet provides details on recreational mining within the Hatcher Pass Public Use Area.
Near Fairbanks, both the Pedro Creek area (about 15 miles north of Fairbanks and the site of the original Fairbanks gold discovery by Felix Pedro
Felix Pedro
Felice Pedroni , known best to Americans by his Hispanicized alias Felix Pedro, was an Italian immigrant whose discovery of gold in Interior Alaska marked the beginning of the 1902 Fairbanks Gold Rush.-Early life:...
in 1902) and Nome Creek area within the White Mountains National Recreation Area (approximately 60 miles north of Fairbanks) have easy access. Gold mining on Nome Creek began in 1900, and there was a stampede in 1910 when word of the find leaked out.
Somewhat more challenging due to access, but also more rewarding, is the Petersville State Recreational Mining Area.
You can also mine on the beaches of Nome.
External links
Alaskan gold mining and exploration companies- Little Squaw Gold Mining Company: Chandalar Property
- Alaska Freegold Co.: The Blue Ribbon Mine, Alaska
- Kinross: Ft. Knox Mine, Alaska
- Coeur Alaska: The Kensington Gold Mine
- Full Metal Minerals
- Barrick Gold
- Teck Cominco: The Pogo Mine
- Tonogold Resources
Mining organizations
Government links
- Alaska Division of Mining, Land & Water: Pebble Project
- Alaska Division of Mining, Land & Water: Ft. Knox Mine
- Pioneers of Kantishna: Pioneers of Kantishna, NPS
- Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys
- Alaska Department of Natural Resources: Mining
- Alaska State Library: Nome Gold Rush
- Alaska Gold Rush Attractions and Historic Sites
- National Park Service: RECREATIONAL GOLD MINING IN ALASKA-Factsheet