Swede Creek

The Swede Creek is a mercury mine located in Alaska.

About the MRDS Data:

All mine locations were obtained from the USGS Mineral Resources Data System. The locations and other information in this database have not been verified for accuracy. It should be assumed that all mines are on private property.

Mine Info

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Site Name

Primary: Swede Creek

Commodity

Primary: Mercury

Location

State: Alaska
District: Council

Land Status

Not available

Holdings

Not available

Workings

Not available

Ownership

Not available

Production

Not available

Deposit

Record Type: Site
Operation Category: Prospect
Operation Type: Unknown
Years of Production:
Organization:
Significant:

Physiography

Not available

Mineral Deposit Model

Not available

Orebody

Not available

Structure

Not available

Alterations

Alteration Type: L
Alteration Text: Oxidation and possibly silicification as Malone (1962) reports this mercury deposit to be in quartzite.

Rocks

Not available

Analytical Data

Not available

Materials

Ore: Cinnabar
Gangue: Hematite

Comments

Comment (Deposit): Model Name = Cinnabar in lenses along shallow-dipping fault in marble.

Comment (Reference): Primary Reference = Mulligan, 1971

Comment (Workings): Workings / Exploration = The portals to the two adits are on the sea cliff about 30 or 40 feet below the top. The adits are short, one was 70 feet long and one 20 feet long (Malone, 1962). A 55-foot-deep vertical shaft is located about 50 feet inland from the sea cliff (Malone, 1962; Mulligan, 1971).

Comment (Geology): Age = Unknown; Cretaceous or Tertiary (postdate mid-Cretaceous deformation and metamorphism in the region).

Comment (Exploration): Status = Inactive

Comment (Geology): Geologic Description = Cinnabar was reported in the placer gold deposits of Swede Creek in 1922 (Cathcart, 1922) and lode prospecting took place by 1929 (Smith, 1932). Two short adits and a shaft explore cinnabar-bearing lodes exposed in the seacliff 400 feet east of the mouth of Swede Creek (Anderson, 1944; Mulligan, 1971). Cinnabar occurs in two, thin iron-stained fault zones, 70 feet apart stratigraphically, that are subparallel to layering in marble and dip 10 to 15 degrees north. The cinnabar-bearing lenses are 5-10 inches thick and a few feet long in the upper fault; the longest dimension observed for an individual lode was 7 feet (Anderson, 1944). Samples of hematite-stained zones contained form 0.04 to 0.14 percent Hg; an 18-inch chip sample across a cinnabar-bearing lens contained 6.76 percent Hg; and a 7-foot chip sample across the same lens and adjacent lower grade mineralized rock contained 2.36 percent Hg (Anderson, 1947, p. 33). Mulligan (1971) sampled iron-stained zones here and did not detect mercury. Bedrock in the area is Paleozoic marble and a band of intercalated metsedimentary schist (Herried, 1965; Mulligan, 1971; Till and others, 1986).

References

Reference (Deposit): Cathcart, S.H., 1922, Metalliferous lodes in southern Seward Peninsula: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 722, p. 163-261.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1932, Mineral industry of Alaska in 1929, in Smith, P.S., and others Mineral resources of Alaska, report on progress of investigations in 1929: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 824-A, p. 1-81.

Reference (Deposit): Till, A.B., Dumoulin, J.A., Gamble, B. ., Kaufman, D.S., and Carroll, P.I., 1986, Preliminary geologic map and fossil data, Soloman, Bendeleben, and southern Kotzebue quadrangles, Seward Peninsula, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 86-276, 10 p., 3 plates, scale 1:250,000.

Reference (Deposit): Cobb, E.H., 1978, Summary of references to mineral occurrences (other than mineral fuels and construction materials) in the Solomon quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 78-181, 185 p.

Reference (Deposit): Malone, Kevin, 1962, Mercury occurrences in Alaska: U.S. Bureau of Mines Circular 8131, 57 p.

Reference (Deposit): Mulligan, J.J., 1971, Sampling gold lode deposits, Bluff, Seward Peninsula, Alaska, with a section on petrography by Walter L. Gnagy: U.S. Bureau of Mines Report of Investigations 7555, 40 p.

Reference (Deposit): Cobb, E.H., 1972, Metallic resources map of the Solomon quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-445, scale 1:250,000.

Reference (Deposit): Herreid, G.H., 1965, Geology of the Bluff area, Solomon quadrangle, Seward Peninsula, Alaska: Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys Geological Report 10, 21 p., 1 sheet, scale 1:40,000.

Reference (Deposit): Anderson, Eskil, 1947, Mineral occurrences other than gold deposits in northwestern Alaska: Alaska Territorial Division of Mines Pamphlet 5-R, 48 p.

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