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  3. Mineral Resource Data System (MRDS)

Bluff

Producer in Alaska, United States with commodities Gold, Mercury
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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. Mineral occurrence model information
  8. Nearby scientific data
  9. Economic information about the deposit and operations
  10. Mining district
  11. Links to other databases
  12. Bibliographic references
  13. General comments
  14. Reporter information

Geologic information

Identification information

Deposit ID 10308292
Record type Site
Current site name Bluff

Geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinates: -163.75925, 64.57032 (WGS84)
Relative position Marine sands have been placer mined for gold offshore the mouth of Daniels Creek. Daniels Creek is a 1-mile drainage that flows south to its mouth on Norton Sound at Bluff. This is included as a part of locality 110 of Cobb (1972, MF 445; 1978, OF 78-181).

Site location context

Political divisions (FIPS codes)

Alaska(state)

United States(country)

North America(continent)

Land(continent)

USGS map quadrangles

Solomon C-4 SW(quadrangle 1:24,000 scale)

Solomon NE(quadrangle 1:100,000 scale)

Solomon C(quadrangle 1:250,000 scale)

Geographic areas

Country State
United States Alaska

Commodities

Commodity Importance
Gold Primary
Mercury Secondary

Materials information

Materials Type of material
Cinnabar Ore
Gold Ore

Mineral occurrence model information

Model code 119
USGS model code 39a
Deposit model name Placer Au-PGE
Mark3 model number 54

Nearby scientific data

(1) -163.75925, 64.57032
ListMap

Economic information

Comments on the geologic information

  • Geologic Description = A rich gold placer was discovered on the beach at Bluff in 1899 and by 1900 placers on Daniels Creek were also being exploited (Brooks and others, 1901). The beach deposit here, reworked from the ancestral Daniels Creek channel, produced 29,000 ounces from about 1,000 feet of the shoreline in 1900. Brooks and others (1901) reported that the heavy minerals with the gold included magnetite, ilmenite, and much cinnabar. In the 1930's, a modified high-line dragline was used to mine gold-bearing material on the nearby seafloor (Mulligan, 1971). The offshore pay zone was defined by a self-propelled 6-inch churn drill that worked on sea ice during the winter. The gold-bearing channel of Daniels Creek is below sea level for several hundred feet upstream from its mouth. This channel is on marble and is very irregular as karst-related features such as solution channels, potholes, and tunnels are well developed. These features developed at a former time of lower sea level and extensions of the irregular channel and pay zone are to be expected offshore. The offshore dragline mining of the 1930's was probably inefficient at exploiting the channel-controlled pay streak and may have preferentially mined sea bottom sands. Subsequent attempts during the 1970's at offshore mining using suction technology were unsuccessful. Bedrock along the coastline here is Paleozoic marble with some intercalated metasedimentary schist (Herreid, 1965; Mulligan, 1971; Till and others, 1986).
  • Age = Quaternary.

Economic information about the deposit and operations

Development status Producer

Comments on exploration

  • Status = Active?

Mining district

District name Council

Comments on the production information

  • Production Notes = The beach gold placer, reworked from the ancestral Daniels Creek channel, produced 29,000 ounces from about 1,000 feet of the shoreline in 1900. Total placer production from the Bluff area (Daniels Creek, modern beaches, and offshore submerged channels or beaches; see ARDF locality SO006) is estimated to be about 90,000 ounces (Mulligan, 1971, p. 7).

Comments on the reserve resource information

  • Reserves = Some ancestral Daniels Creek channel deposits are probably remain unexpoited offshore.

Comments on the workings information

  • Workings / Exploration = Equipment for dragline operations were erected onshore but the workings were on the seafloor offshore. The modern beach was mined at the turn of the century primarily by hand methods. Diggings associated with the beach mining were only locally preserved in 1966 (Mulligan, 1971).

Reference information

Bibliographic references

Comments on the references

  • Primary Reference = Mulligan, 1971

General comments

Subject category Comment text
Deposit Model Name = Placer Au-PGE (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).

Reporter information

Type Date Name Affiliation Comment
Reporter 19-AUG-99 Travis L. Hudson Applied Geology

Beyond USGS

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

Maps centered on this site

Authoritative Alaska resources

These are landing pages for further research — the state agencies don't currently expose per-mine deep links.