1. Mineral Resources
  2. Online Spatial Data
  3. Mineral Resource Data System (MRDS)

Lake Creek

Past Producer in Alaska, United States with commodity Gold
Map
XML
JSON
KML
B
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 10001384
MRDS ID A012126
Record type Site
Current site name Lake Creek

Geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinates: -149.45332, 67.49971 (WGS84)
Relative position This placer deposit is located along the south shore of Bob Johnson Lake (formerly Big Lake). The reference point is the present channel deposit (sec. 24, T. 31 N., R. 9 W., of the Fairbanks Meridian). A buried channel deposit was mined just below the small lake at the head of Lake Creek. The location is accurate within a 1/4-mile radius.

Site location context

Political divisions (FIPS codes)

Yukon-Koyukuk(Census area)

Alaska(state)

United States(country)

North America(continent)

Land(continent)

USGS map quadrangles

Chandalar B-5(quadrangle 1:63,360 scale)

Chandalar S(quadrangle 1:100,000 scale)

Chandalar(quadrangle 1:250,000 scale)

Hydrologic units (watersheds)

Alaska(hydrologic region)

Geographic areas

Country State
United States Alaska

Commodities

Commodity Importance
Gold Primary

Materials information

Materials Type of material
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) -149.45332, 67.49971
ListMap

Economic information

Comments on the geologic information

  • Geologic Description = Lake Creek is reported to have a deep channel as well as the present channel (Reed, 1938). Mining has occurred both in the present channel near the mouth of the stream (location of reference point) and on the deep channel near the head of the creek. This creek heads against Wakeup Creek (CH025), another productive creek in the area, and the deep channel may be an extension of the Wakeup Creek high channel on the other side of the divide. ? When Reed (1938, p. 38-40) visited the creek in 1937, the present stream had been worked from about 300 feet south of its mouth at Bob Johnson (Big) Lake to 1,500 ft south of the lakeshore. The stream in this area was 10 to 20 ft wide and the gravel was 9 to 12 ft deep. The gravels are reported to be coarse schist 'slide' rock mixed with fine sand and coarse waterworn gravel (Reed, 1938). The gold recovered from the present channel reportedly is all coarse. The values obtained were about $0.50 per square foot of bedrock and the gold's fineness was reported to be 906.? Work on the old buried channel started in 1930 near the upper end of the creek. The depth to bedrock was 30 to 40 feet; 20 feet of this was a blue-gray mud and the rest gravel. The gold was finer than that recovered from the present channel workings and was on and in the upper 1 ft of bedrock. The bedrock was described as almost flat-lying gray schist (Reed, 1938). The gravel is coarse and waterworn with numerous erratic boulders and noticeable quantities of quartz.
  • Age = Quaternary.

Economic information about the deposit and operations

Development status Past Producer
Commodity type Metallic

Comments on exploration

  • Status = Not determined

Mining district

District name Koyukuk

Comments on the production information

  • Production Notes = Gold was discovered in 1915 (Reed, 1938) and production noted as late as 1985 (Bundtzen and others, 1986).

Comments on the workings information

  • Workings / Exploration = Surface mining on the present channel has been by ground sluicing and shoveling in open cuts (Reed, 1938). The deep channel was worked by drift mining. Two 38.5-ft shafts located the buried deep channel 150 to 180 feet north of the open-cut workings of the deep channel. One 76-foot shaft and one 40-foot shaft, 500 to 1000 feet from the open-cut workings on the deep channel, did not intersect that channel. Exploration activity on this creek was reported as late as 1990, but there were no details given.

Reference information

Bibliographic references

Comments on the references

  • Primary Reference = Reed, 1938

General comments

Subject category Comment text
Deposit Model Name = Placer Au (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a)
Deposit Other Comments = See also: Wakeup Creek (CH025). Alaska Kardex No. KX-031-9 (Kardex is a card file mining claim information system located at the State of Alaska DNR Public Information Center in Fairbanks).

Reporter information

Type Date Name Affiliation Comment
Reporter 17-NOV-1999 J.M. Britton U.S. Geological Survey

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.