Quartz Creek

Past Producer in Alaska, United States with commodities Gold, Tungsten
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 10107533
MRDS ID A012742
Record type Site
Current site name Quartz Creek
Related records 10233174

Geographic coordinates

Geographic coordinates: -164.70725, 65.36043 (WGS84)
Relative position Quartz Creek crosses the Nome-Taylor road at about mile 78.5 (Brakes Bottom). Cobb (1972,1975) reports that placer mining took place from about 3,000 feet upstream of the road crossing to the intersection of North Fork of Quartz Creek and Quartz Creek, a total distance of about 7,000 feet. This is locality 42 of Cobb (1972; MF 417).

Site location context

Political divisions (FIPS codes)

Nome(Census area)

Alaska(state)

United States(country)

North America(continent)

Land(continent)

USGS map quadrangles

Bendeleben B-6(quadrangle 1:63,360 scale)

Bendeleben SW(quadrangle 1:100,000 scale)

Bendeleben(quadrangle 1:250,000 scale)

Hydrologic units (watersheds)

Imuruk Basin(hydrologic unit)

Norton Sound(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

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) -164.70725, 65.36043

Economic information

Comments on the geologic information

  • Geologic Description = This part of Quartz Creek drains across schist in the upper part and Pliocene-Pleistocene Kougarok gravel in the lower part (Hopkins, 1963; Sainsbury and others, 1969; Till and others, 1986). Gold was discovered here in 1999 or 1900 (Brooks and others, 1901; Collier and others, 1908). Even the first workers (Brooks and others, 1901) suspected that at least some of the gold was reworked from Kougarok gravel which has been shown to contain small amounts of gold (Sainsbury and others, 1969; Sainsbury, 1975). Gravel mined at the mouth of Dahl Creek was 2 to 3 foot-thick on a blue clay false bedrock (Collier and others, 1908). The medium coarse gold here probably came from Dahl Creek (BN006). However, the best placers were reported to be on bedrock in the upstream parts of the creek. All bedrock in the area is part of a Lower Paleozoic metasedimentary assemblage (Sainsbury and others, 1969; Till and others, 1986). Sainsbury and others (1969) emphasize that gold placers in this area are most strongly associated with exposures of the metamorphic bedrock assemblage rather than with Kougarok gravel.
  • 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 Kougarok

Comments on the workings information

  • Workings / Exploration = Open-cut placer mining operations have occurred at several places along about 7,000 feet of the creek.

Reference information

Bibliographic references

Comments on the references

  • Primary Reference = Cobb, 1975 (OFR 75-429)

General comments

Subject category Comment text
Deposit Model Name = Placer Au-PGE (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a)
Deposit Other Comments = Unnamed tributaries to Quartz Creek are reported to have scheelite in placer concentrates (Anderson, 1947).

Reporter information

Type Date Name Affiliation Comment
Reporter 15-MAR-1999 Travis L. Hudson Applied Geology

Beyond USGS

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

Authoritative Alaska resources

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