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Submarine Beach

Producer in Alaska, United States with commodities Silver, Gold, Copper, Tungsten
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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 10308966
MRDS ID A012957
Record type Site
Current site name Submarine Beach
Related records 10002095, 10160022

Geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinates: -165.47177, 64.51108 (WGS84)
Relative position Submarine Beach is a composite abrasion-platform gold deposit that can be traced from Dry Creek at Nome west as far as Jess Creek (a minor drainage about a mile east of the mouth of Penny River). It is richest and best developed west of Nome near the Nome airport. The map location in the northeast corner of section 28, T. 11 S., R. 34 W., Kateel River Meridian, represents the general area between two composite elements, the so-called Inner and Outer Submarine Beaches. The Inner Beach is one-quarter to one-half mile inland from the modern beach and is about about 20 feet below sea level. The Outer Beach is 300 to 1,000 feet inland from the modern beach and is at an elevation of about 35 feet below sea level. Submarine Beach is locality 139 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 C-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
Silver Primary
Gold Primary
Copper Secondary
Tungsten Critical Secondary

Materials information

Materials Type of material
Arsenopyrite Ore
Chalcopyrite Ore
Gold Ore
Ilmenite Ore
Magnetite Ore
Pyrite Ore
Scheelite Ore
Garnet Gangue

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) -165.47177, 64.51108
ListMap

Economic information

Comments on the geologic information

  • Geologic Description = Submarine Beach is the oldest recognized placer deposit that developed on the abrasion platform of the Third Beach strandline. It is irregular, but has a crudely linear trend from near the mouth of Dry Creek at Nome west as far as Jess Creek in the Nome C-2 quadrangle. Average elevations on the Inner and Outer elements of the beach are below sea level, at about -20 and -35 feet respectively, but the range of elevations is between about -10 and -40 feet (Metcalfe and Tuck, 1942, p. 36). Near Nome, the deposit is on silt false bedrock. Near its western recognized limit at Jess Creek, Submarine Beach is on schistose bedrock. In the area west of Nome, where the deposit has been dredged, the overall configuration suggests a fan-like placer gold deposit that could have accumlated at the mouth of an ancestral Anvil Creek. According to Metcalfe and Tuck (1942, p. 36), 'The wide distribution of gold in general indicates that it may have been the result of an old beachline that was higher than the sea that destroyed it.' In common with the other abrasion so called beaches, such as Center Creek (NM286), Intermediate (NM287), and Monroeville (NM257), sulfides are abundant in the placer concentrates, along with some scheelite. The sulfide minerals are principally arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, and pyrite. Chalcopyrite was especially abundant in the 'Outer' beach (Moffit, 1913, p. 119). Garnet occurs, but it does not form the ruby sand lenses that typify the true strandline beaches, such as Present (NM254), Second (NM256), and Third (NM258). The sulfide minerals probably contain gold. In 1939, samples of the Submarine Beach deposit contained 1.059 pounds of sulfide per cubic yard in the interval above bedrock, and cleaned sulfide concentrate contained 14.10 dollars worth of gold per ton of concentrates. Although the sulfides were cleaned by panning and amalgamation, some of the gold probably is still present as very fine grained free gold. The placer gold of Submarine Beach was relatively coarse compared with other beach or abrasion deposits; numerous nuggets weighed as much as 0.5 ounce (Moffit, 1913, p. 118). The Submarine beaches were discovered in 1907 and were developed by shafts about 70 feet deep. One shaft in the 'Inner' beach bottomed at an elevation of about -20 feet (Smith, 1909, p. 271-273; Moffit, 1913, p. 118-119). The deposit consisted of alternating layers of sand and gravel, gravel predominating at depth. The gravel consisted mainly of 'slate' (their term), greenstone, schist, feldspathic schist, and limestone (marble). It also contained boulders of granite and quartz of as much as 2 feet across. The quartz boulders were semi-angular but with apparently water-rounded corners. Sand layers in the beach also contained mollusk shells, more broken, hence inferred to be older, than the shells in Intermediate Beach. The Submarine Bench deposits were mined from about 1908 into the 1990s. One large bucket-line dredge operated on Submarine Beach from about 1975 until 1995.
  • Age = Late Tertiary to Pleistocene. Fossils in the Submarine deposits were reported as late Miocene or Pliocene (Moffit, 1913, p. 45-48). Hopkins, MacNeil, and Leopold (1960) postulate that Submarine Beach could be as old as Pliocene.

Economic information about the deposit and operations

Development status Producer
Commodity type Metallic

Comments on exploration

  • Status = Active

Mining district

District name Nome

Comments on the reserve resource information

  • Reserves = The Submarine Beach mine area contains a gold resource that could be mined under favorable economic conditions.

Comments on the workings information

  • Workings / Exploration = Submarine Beach was discovered in 1907 and was at first worked from underground drift mines in frozen ground. After the development of cold-water thawing in the 1920's, the deposit was worked by bucket-line dredges that mined the thaw-fields after one or two years of thawing. The Submarine Beach was reopened after gold was allowed to seek a free-market price (Kastelic, 1975). The mine was shut down in 1995, when thawing and other operating costs exceeded the value of the ground, which is on the order of 0.01 to 0.015 ounce of gold per cubic yard of mining section (Bundtzen and others, 1995). High-resolution seismic surveys and drilling related to the development of the offshore gold resource have contributed to the knowledge of the Submarine Beaches (Nelson and Hopkins, 1972; Tagg and Greene, 1973).

Reference information

Bibliographic references

Comments on the references

  • Primary Reference = Metcalfe and Tuck, 1942

General comments

Subject category Comment text
Deposit Model Name = Marine placer gold deposit; intergrading marine abrasion and fan-like deposits reworked by offshore currents (Cox and singer, 1986; model 39).

Reporter information

Type Date Name Affiliation Comment
Reporter 10-JUL-00 Hawley, C.C. and Hudson, Travis L. 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

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