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

Klery Creek

Past Producer in Alaska, United States with commodities Gold, Tungsten
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. Alteration
  8. Mineral occurrence model information
  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 10003081
MRDS ID A015610
Record type Site
Current site name Klery Creek
Related records 10160128

Geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinates: -160.39354, 67.17946 (WGS84)
Relative position This location includes placer ground on Klery Creek extending from the confluence of Bear Creek upstream to the confluence of Gold Run Creek downstream, a distance of approximately 13 miles. The description of Klery Creek includes Joe Gulch, a small left-limit tributary about 2 miles long, and Caribou Creek, a small right-limit tributary about 3 miles long just north of Jack Creek. Coordinates are for the mining camp of Klery Creek in section 34, T. 21 N., R. 8 W., of the Kateel River Meridian. Cobb (1972, MF-386), location 6 and Schmidt and Allegro (1988), location 281.

Site location context

Political divisions (FIPS codes)

Northwest Arctic(Borough)

Alaska(state)

United States(country)

North America(continent)

Land(continent)

USGS map quadrangles

Baird Mountains A-3(quadrangle 1:63,360 scale)

Baird Mountains S(quadrangle 1:100,000 scale)

Baird Mountains C(quadrangle 1:250,000 scale)

Hydrologic units (watersheds)

Lower Kobuk River(hydrologic unit)

Kobuk-Selawik Rivers(hydrologic accounting unit)

Northwest(hydrologic subregion)

Alaska(hydrologic region)

Geographic areas

Country State
United States Alaska

Commodities

Commodity Importance
Gold Primary
Tungsten Critical Secondary

Materials information

Materials Type of material
Gold Ore

Alteration

  • (Local) Limonite thought to be oxidized from pyrite.

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) -160.39354, 67.17946
ListMap

Economic information

Comments on the geologic information

  • Geologic Description = Rocks in the area of Klery Creek include quartz-mica schist, mafic greenschist, calcareous schist, chloritic quartz schist, phyllite, graphitic schist and limestone of lower to mid-Paleozoic age. The limestone is bluish-white, thick bedded, fractured, and folded. The rocks are cut by steeply-dipping to vertical, milky quartz veins ranging from an inch to 30 feet wide. The bedrock in most of Klery Creek is schist. In the area of Klery Creek camp and downstream for perhaps 1/2 mile bedrock is a massive, much fractured, steeply-dipping limestone which transversely intersects the creek (Smith, 1913).? the gold placer deposits along Klery Creek are both in stream channel and bench deposits. Some of the richer deposits may have resulted from the reworking and reconcentrating of gold eroded from a paleo-channel. Smith (1911) reported two types of gold. One is coarse, angular, dark in color and often attached to or enclosed by quartz or black, graphitic schist . This type of gold occurs in a few locations along the streambed and in bench deposits. It is thought to be derived from the paleo-channel. Gold forms filaments in the black schist country rock, indicating that some of the placer gold was derived from this unit (Smith, 1913). The other type of gold is very fine and brightly colored. It is the more common gold found on the creek. An 8.5-ounce nugget of this type was found during the 1915 mining season (Brooks, 1916).? Pay gravels from 12 to 18 inches thick overlie schist bedrock. The pay gravels are overlain by 4 to 5 feet of overburden. During mining, the upper 1 to 2 feet of bedrock is taken up and processed. Depth to pay in the bench deposits varies from 6 to 20 feet. At the mouth of Klery Creek about 500 feet southeast of the mouth of Bear Creek, a shaft was sunk to a depth of 135 feet in frozen ground without hitting bedrock (Reed, 1932). ? the ground on Klery Creek was said to run $1.10 per cubic yard in 1933 (gold at $20.67/ounce). This was a combination of both coarse and fine gold from a depth of 14 to 30 feet (Reed, 1932). Fineness of the coarse gold from Klery Creek was determined as 888.5 or a value of $18.50 per ounce. The fine gold, although not assayed, has a higher gold tenor and was worth $18.37 per ounce (Smith, 1913). ? Concentrates contained much magnetite, some ilmenite, pyrite, limonite and very little garnet (Cobb and others, 1981). Three pan concentrate samples collected from the central portion of Klery Creek in 1978 contained tungsten values ranging from 10 to 18 ppm (Degenhart and others, 1978).
  • Age = Quaternary.

Economic information about the deposit and operations

Development status Past Producer
Commodity type Metallic

Comments on exploration

  • Status = Inactive

Mining district

District name Kiana

Comments on the production information

  • Production Notes = Production from Klery Creek through 1931 estimated at 31,300 ounces (Schmidt and Allegro, 1988).

Comments on the workings information

  • Workings / Exploration = Gold was first discovered on Klery Creek in 1909. Placer deposits were worked more or less continuously up to World War II. Mining operations resumed in the late 1940's when the ground was worked with a 3-cubic-yard dredge. The dredge worked for 6 years and was abandoned on the creek. In the late 1980's a small mine was in operation just upstream from the mining camp on Klery Creek for several years.

Reference information

Bibliographic references

Comments on the references

  • Primary Reference = Smith, 1913; Reed, 1932

General comments

Subject category Comment text
Deposit Model Name = Placer Au (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).
Deposit Other Comments = Klery Creek has a large drainage area and a confined stream bed which causes water to rise rapidly during heavy rains. This causes severe wash-out problems for placer mine operations.

Reporter information

Type Date Name Affiliation Comment
Reporter 29-DEC-99 Williams, Anita 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.