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Copper King

Prospect in Alaska, United States with commodities Copper, Lead, Silver, Gold
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Sections on this page
  1. Identification information
  2. Geographic coordinates
  3. Site location context
  4. Geographic areas
  5. Commodities
  6. Materials information
  7. Alteration
  8. Host and associated rocks
  9. Nearby scientific data
  10. Economic information about the deposit and operations
  11. Mining district
  12. Links to other databases
  13. Bibliographic references
  14. General comments
  15. Reporter information

Geologic information

Identification information

Deposit ID 10001955
MRDS ID A012793
Record type Site
Current site name Copper King

Geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinates: -165.21637, 64.87957 (WGS84)
Relative position The Copper King prospect is on the northwest flank of hill 1610, which lies between Copper Creek and Dickens Creek. The prospect is at an elevation of about 1,100 feet, 0.75 mile south of the Nome-Taylor road near the divide between the Nome River and Salmon Lake drainages. The prospect is located within about 500 feet. It is locality 6 of Hummel (1962 [MF 248]) and included with other nearby prospects in locality 16 of Cobb (1972 [MF-463], 1978 [OFR 78-93]).

Site location context

Political divisions (FIPS codes)

Nome(Census area)

Alaska(state)

United States(country)

North America(continent)

Land(continent)

USGS map quadrangles

Nome D-1(quadrangle 1:63,360 scale)

Solomon NW(quadrangle 1:100,000 scale)

Nome(quadrangle 1:250,000 scale)

Hydrologic units (watersheds)

Nome(hydrologic unit)

Norton Sound(hydrologic accounting unit)

Northwest(hydrologic subregion)

Alaska(hydrologic region)

Geographic areas

Country State
United States Alaska

Commodities

Commodity Importance
Copper Primary
Lead Primary
Silver Secondary
Gold Secondary

Materials information

Materials Type of material
Azurite Ore
Bornite Ore
Chalcopyrite Ore
Galena Ore
Malachite Ore
Pyrite Ore
Mica Gangue
Quartz Gangue

Alteration

  • (Local) Bleaching, development of silica-rich rock, introduction of white mica, and oxidation.

Host and associated rocks

  • Host or associated Associated
    Rock type Plutonic Rock > Granitoid > Granite
  • Host or associated Host
    Rock type Sedimentary Rock > Carbonate > Limestone

Nearby scientific data

(1) -165.21637, 64.87957
ListMap

Economic information

Comments on the geologic information

  • Geologic Description = Hummel (1962 [MF 248]) noted the presence of copper and lead minerals here. On the basis of descriptions of copper mineralization in the general area (Smith, 1908; Cathcart, 1922), the mineralization is likely to include azurite, malachite, bornite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, and possibly galena in silica-rich rocks near a marble-schist contact. Early workers noted that the mineralization was stratabound but interpreted it to be in silicified zones and to have a replacement origin.? Picked samples (probably from the Copper Mountain prospect, NM054, 0.6 mile to the south) contained 15 percent copper, 20 percent lead, and 'rather high silver and low gold content' (Smith, 1908, p. 240-242). This prospect appears to have similarities to several other copper-bearing deposits in the eastern Teller quadrangle (for example, the Ward mine, Hudson, 1998, TE071) and in the western Solomon quadrangle (for example, the Wheeler mine, Hudson, 1999, SO172).? the Copper King prospect occurs in graphitic calc-mica schist with interlayered marble; the schist includes concordant bodies of granitic orthogneiss; one of the orthogneiss bodies occurs below the Copper King prospect (Hummel, 1962, MF-248; Thurston, 1985, figure 3A). Cathcart (1922, p. 219) described the orthogneiss as mainly fine grained, but with local porphyritic facies. An orthogneiss body 4.5 miles to the northeast has been determined to have a 678 Ma protolith age (Amato and Wright, 1998).? the metamorphic rocks are part of the Nome Group and derived from Precambrian to early Paleozoic protoliths (Till and Dumoulin, 1994). The Nome Group underwent regional blueschist facies metamorphism in the Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous (Sainsbury, Coleman, and Kachadoorian, 1970; Forbes and others, 1984; Thurston, 1985; Armstrong and others, 1986; Hannula and McWilliams, 1995). The blueschist facies rocks were recrystallized to greenschist facies or higher metamorphic grades in conjunction with regional extension, crustal melting, and magmatism in the mid-Cretaceous (Hudson and Arth, 1983; Miller and Hudson, 1991; Miller and others, 1992; Dumitru and others, 1995; Hannula and others, 1995; Hudson, 1994; Amato and others, 1994; Amato and Wright, 1997, 1998). Lode gold mineralization on Seward Peninsula is mostly related to the higher temperature metamorphism in the mid-Cretaceous (Apodoca, 1994; Ford, 1993 [thesis]; Ford and Snee, 1996; Goldfarb and others, 1997). The age of nearly stratabound copper occurrences is more enigmatic, with a range of ages from that of the protolith through the late Proterozoic emplacement of some orthogneiss to the mid-Cretaceous.
  • Age = Late Proterozoic, early Paleozoic, or mid-Cretaceous.

Economic information about the deposit and operations

Development status Prospect
Commodity type Metallic

Comments on exploration

  • Status = Probably inactive

Mining district

District name Nome

Comments on the workings information

  • Workings / Exploration = There is a short adit and shallow shaft on the property. The earliest workings were before 1908 (Smith, 1908). There has been little recent work.

Reference information

Bibliographic references

Comments on the references

  • Primary Reference = Smith, 1908

General comments

Subject category Comment text
Deposit Model Name = Carbonate-hosted, sulfide-bearing silica-rich rock.

Reporter information

Type Date Name Affiliation Comment
Reporter 22-OCT-99 Hawley, C.C. Hawley Resource Group
Reporter 22-OCT-99 Travis L. Hudson Hawley Resource Group

Beyond USGS

Supplemental information added by qvyshift.com. Not part of the original USGS MRDS record.

Maps centered on this site

Authoritative Alaska resources

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