Unnamed (Gulf of Alaska coast)

Site Name

Primary: Unnamed (Gulf of Alaska coast)

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Commodity

Primary: PGE
Primary: Iron
Primary: Gold
Primary: Titanium
Secondary: Chromium
Secondary: Zirconium

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Location

State: Alaska
District: Yakutat

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Land Status

Not available

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Holdings

Not available

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Workings

Not available

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Ownership

Not available

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Production

Not available

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Deposit

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

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Physiography

Not available

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Mineral Deposit Model

Not available

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Orebody

Not available

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Structure

Not available

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Alterations

Not available

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Rocks

Not available

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Analytical Data

Not available

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Materials

Ore: Ruthenium
Ore: Ilmenite
Ore: Magnetite
Ore: Platinum
Ore: Rutile
Ore: Zircon
Ore: Palladium
Ore: Iridium
Ore: Osmium
Ore: Rhodium
Ore: Gold
Gangue: Garnet

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Comments

Comment (Reserve-Resource): Reserves = spiral concentrate samples.

Comment (Geology): Geologic Description = A series of beach placer deposits extends for about 64 miles from the north edge of the Mt. Fairweather quadrangle south to the head of Astrolobe Bay on the Mt. Fairweather B-3 quadrangle (Rossman, 1957; Rossman, 1963, B 1121-F, p. F45-47; Kimball and others, 1978, p. C28-C91). Related deposits formed at higher sea stands extend inland, in places for more than one mile. Economic production from the beaches has been limited to transient deposits rich in gold that form lenses and layers as much as 1-foot thick, especially after heavy spring and winter storms. More common economic heavy minerals, such as ilmenite, magnetite, and zircon, are enriched in layers up to several feet thick, that locally extend along the beach for miles and in widths of several hundred feet. Similar deposits are locally preserved in back beaches. The ultimate source of heavy minerals, particularly ilmenite, magnetite, PGEs and some of the gold is in the layered mafic complexes of the Fairweather Range. Gold and other resistant minerals as zircon were also derived from other bedrock sources. Littoral processes winnowed out light minerals and left layers and lenses of black and ruby sands that contain most of the valuable dense minerals. The deposits are products of a dynamic, high-energy coastal environment--essentially single cycle (Foley and others, 1995). . The beaches range in sedimentary character from well-sorted sandy to gravelly sand to sandy cobble and sandy boulder. Dunes cover some ancient beaches in the back beach area, and forested terraces mark the location of beaches that either formed at higher sea-stands or were uplifted tectonically (Yehle, 1979). The beach deposits were exploited on a small scale from at least as early as 1894 until World War II, with lesser activity since then.

Comment (Geology): Age = Holocene.

Comment (Production): Production Notes = Mertie (1933) estimated that about 4000 ounces of gold were produced between 1890 and 1917. Probably at least 1000 more ounces were produced between 1917 and World War II when there was small-scale placer activity almost every year. Total PGE production has been about 100 ounces or less.

Comment (Deposit): Model Name = Modern and fossil beach placers.

Comment (Deposit): Other Comments = the ilmenite from the beach placers is a high-iron type that needs special processing (Foley and others, 1995). Much of the gold is very fine-grained and difficult to recover. Cook (1969) studied the recovery of the very fine gold of the beach placers by less conventional methods, including flotation. . The beach placers in the Fairweather area are part of the extensive Pacific Coast heavy-mineral placer system recognized by Clifton and Luepke (1987). The entire beach placer resource centered on Lituya Bay in the Mt. Fairweather quadrangle is in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. The Park extends offshore to about 3 miles northerly to about Sea Otter Creek; north of that point, offshore lands out to the three-mile limit belong to the State of Alaska.

Comment (Workings): Workings / Exploration = The beaches in the Mt. Fairweather quadrangle were probably first exploited by the Russians. The most extensive American mining occurred from about 1894 to 1917 (Mertie, 1933), but small scale mining took place almost continuously until World War II. Essentially continuous small-scale mining is documented in the annual resource reports prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey, including the 1904, 1918, 1919, 1922, 1923, and 1925 reports of Brooks, also the resource reports of Brooks and Martin in 1921 and Brooks and Capps in 1924. Brook's successor, P. S. Smith documented acctivity in 1926, 1934, including B 857-A, also 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939--B 910A, and 1941 and 1942. Much of the mining was by small scale methods, but from 1901 to 1903 Lituya Bay Gold Mining Co. used hydraulic lifts that fed sluice boxes, the process water was brought down down to the beach in timbered flumes (Wright and Wright, 1907). There was some claim activity in the 1960s, and Kimball and others (1978) reported 136 twenty-acre placer claims still active in 1978 . The area has also been explored by the USGS and USBM. In 1952, Rossman (1957) examined the area between Sea Otter Creek and Dixon Harbor. Miller (1961) reported on the geology of Lituya district, after earlier reporting on the Tertiary rocks that are a possible intermediate source of the placer materials (Miller, 1953). Thomas and Berryhill (1962) sampled beaches between Sea Otter Creek and Icy Point in 1957 and 1958. Kimball and others (1987) studied the entire area between 1975-1977. Because of budget and permitting limits, only the modern beaches were studied, but 26 sample lines at 20 localities and 241 holes were drilled over the approximate 64 mile length of the deposits, in addition to collecting surface channel and grab samples. The core samples were collected with small diameter (0.17 to 0.25 foot) augers or split tubes. Swell factor was measured in the field. The samples were processed following a standard flow sheet, that included size splitting at 20 mesh. The minus-20-mesh fraction was stripped with a hand magnet to separate magnetite, then further separated by electromagnetic and heavy liquid methods. In the coarser fraction gold was determined by fire assay of a panned concentrate (Kimball and others, 1978, p. C49-53). The sample size was recognized as too small to give reliable average gold contents. Ilmenite was determined accurately. In 1992 and 1993, the Bureau again sampled the area. This work by Foley and others (1995) concentrated on 'valuable heavy minerals'--defined as ilmenite + rutile + zircon--but obtained data on other heavy minerals including gold and PGEs. Earlier, the content of PGEs reported from beach and other deposits in the province were summarized by Foley and others (1989).

Comment (Exploration): Status = Probably inactive

Comment (Reference): Primary Reference = Kimball and others, 1978; Thomas and Berryhill, 1962; Foley and others, 1995

Comment (Reserve-Resource): Reserves = Kimball and others, 1978 (p. C86-89) estimated 6 million cubic yards of material in resource blocks scattered along the 64-mile length of the placer field. The material had an average grade of 1 percent ilmenite and less than 2 cents per cubic-yard of gold, assuming a gold price of $300/ounce..Extrapolating to the unsampled areas outside the blocks suggested a resource of 90 million cubic yards of material in the belt, with grades similar to those determined by Kimball and associates. Locally some beaches are appreciably richer.. Foley and others (1995) determined an average of 2.43 percent ilmenite and 0.01 percent rutile in their Fairweather samples (p. 2). Zircon is less abundant in the Fairweather than the Yakutat and Yakataga areas (p. 48)..A sample collected east of Icy Point near the mouth of Kaknau River contained 14.88 percent titanium in the spiral concentrates. Sample 310, collected northwest of LaPerouse Glacier, contained significant gold in the head and

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References

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1934, Mineral industry of Alaska in 1933: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 864-A, p. 1-94.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1939, Mineral industry of Alaska in 1937: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 910-A, p. 1-113.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1936, Mineral industry in Alaska in 1934: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 868-A, p. 1-91.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1937, Mineral industry in Alaska in 1935: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 880-A, p. 1-95.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1938, Mineral industry of Alaska in 1936: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 897-A, p. 1-107.

Reference (Deposit): Clifton, H.E., and Luepke, G., 1987, Heavy-mineral placer deposits of the continental margin of Alaska and the Pacific Coast States, in Geology and resource potential of the continental margin of western North America and adjacent ocean basins, Beaufort Sea to Baja California: Circum-Pacific Council for Energy and Mineral Resources, Earth Science Series, v. 6, p. 691-738.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S. 1939, Mineral industry in Alaska in 1937: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 910-A, p. 1-113.

Reference (Deposit): Kimball, A.L., Still, J.C., and Rataj, J.L., 1978, Mineral resources, in Brew, D. A., and others, Mineral resources of the Glacier Bay National Monument wilderness study area, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 78-494, p. C1-C375.

Reference (Deposit): Yehle, L.A., 1979, Reconnaissance engineering geology of the Yakutat area, Alaska, with emphasis on evaluation of earthquake and other geologic hazards: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1074, 44 p.

Reference (Deposit): Miller, D. J., 1953, Preliminary geologic map of Tertiary rocks in the southeastern part of the Lituya district, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 81, 2 maps, scale 1:63,360.

Reference (Deposit): Kennedy, G.C. and Walton, M.S., Jr., 1946, Geology and associated mineral deposits of some ultrabasic rocks in southeastern Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 947-D, p. 65-84.

Reference (Deposit): Rossman, Darwin, 1957, Ilmenite-bearing beach sands near Lituya Bay, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 149, 10 p.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H., 1925, Alaska's mineral resources and production, 1923: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 773, p. 3-52.

Reference (Deposit): Foley, J.Y., Burns, L.E., Schneider, C.L., and Forbes, R.B., 1989, Preliminary report of platinum group element occurrences in Alaska: Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys Public Data File 89-20, 32 p., 1 map sheet, scale 1:2,500,000.

Reference (Deposit): MacKevett, E.M., Jr., Brew, D.A., Hawley, C.C., Huff, L.C., and Smith, J.G., 1971, Mineral resources of Glacier Bay National Monument, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 632, 90 p., 12 plates, scale 1:250,000.

Reference (Deposit): Berg, H.C., and Cobb, E.H., 1967, Metalliferous Lode Deposits of Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1246, 254 p.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1934, Mineral industry of Alaska in 1932: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 857-A, p. 1-91.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1926, Mineral industry of Alaska in 1924: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 783-A, p. 1-39.

Reference (Deposit): Foley, J.Y., La Berge, R.D., Grosz, A.E., Oliver, F.S., and Hirt, W.C., 1995, Onshore titanium and related heavy mineral investigations in the eastern Gulf of Alaska region, southern Alaska: U.S. Bureau of Mines Open-File Report 10-95, 125 p.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1939, Mineral industry of Alaska in 1938: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 917-A, p. 1-113.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H., 1918, Mineral resources of Alaska, 1916: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 662, 469 p.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H. and Capps, S.R., 1924, Mineral industry in Alaska, 1922: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 755, p. 1-56.

Reference (Deposit): Thomas, B.I., and Berryhill, R. V., 1962, Reconnaissance studies of Alaskan beach sands, eastern Gulf of Alaska: U.S. Bureau of Mines Report of Investigations 5986, 40 p.

Reference (Deposit): Miller, D. J., 1961, Geology of the Lituya district, Alaska, Gulf of Alaska Tertiary Province, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 210, 1 map, scale 1:96,000.

Reference (Deposit): Rossman, Darwin, 1963, Geology and petrology of two stocks of layered gabbro in the Fairweather Range, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1121-F, p. F1-F50.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H., and Martin, G. C. 1921, The Alaska mining industry in 1919: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 714, p. 59-95.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H., 1923, The Alaska mining industry in 1921: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 739, p. 1-50.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H., 1922, The Alaska mining industry in 1920: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 722-A, p. 1-74.

Reference (Deposit): Wright, F.E., and Wright, C.W., 1907, Lode mining in southeastern Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 314-C, p. 47-72.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H., 1919, Alaska's mineral supplies: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 666, p 89-102.

Reference (Deposit): Brooks, A.H., 1904, Placer mining in Alaska in 1903: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 225, p. 43-59.

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