Bluff

The Bluff is a gold 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: Bluff

Commodity

Primary: Gold
Secondary: 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: Producer
Operation Type: Unknown
Years of Production:
Organization:
Significant:

Physiography

Not available

Mineral Deposit Model

Model Name: Placer Au-PGE

Orebody

Not available

Structure

Not available

Alterations

Not available

Rocks

Not available

Analytical Data

Not available

Materials

Ore: Cinnabar
Ore: Gold

Comments

Comment (Reference): Primary Reference = Mulligan, 1971

Comment (Reserve-Resource): Reserves = Some ancestral Daniels Creek channel deposits are probably remain unexpoited offshore.

Comment (Exploration): Status = Active?

Comment (Workings): Workings / Exploration = Equipment for dragline operations were erected onshore but the workings were on the seafloor offshore. The modern beach was mined at the turn of the century primarily by hand methods. Diggings associated with the beach mining were only locally preserved in 1966 (Mulligan, 1971).

Comment (Deposit): Model Name = Placer Au-PGE (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).

Comment (Geology): Geologic Description = A rich gold placer was discovered on the beach at Bluff in 1899 and by 1900 placers on Daniels Creek were also being exploited (Brooks and others, 1901). The beach deposit here, reworked from the ancestral Daniels Creek channel, produced 29,000 ounces from about 1,000 feet of the shoreline in 1900. Brooks and others (1901) reported that the heavy minerals with the gold included magnetite, ilmenite, and much cinnabar. In the 1930's, a modified high-line dragline was used to mine gold-bearing material on the nearby seafloor (Mulligan, 1971). The offshore pay zone was defined by a self-propelled 6-inch churn drill that worked on sea ice during the winter. The gold-bearing channel of Daniels Creek is below sea level for several hundred feet upstream from its mouth. This channel is on marble and is very irregular as karst-related features such as solution channels, potholes, and tunnels are well developed. These features developed at a former time of lower sea level and extensions of the irregular channel and pay zone are to be expected offshore. The offshore dragline mining of the 1930's was probably inefficient at exploiting the channel-controlled pay streak and may have preferentially mined sea bottom sands. Subsequent attempts during the 1970's at offshore mining using suction technology were unsuccessful. Bedrock along the coastline here is Paleozoic marble with some intercalated metasedimentary schist (Herreid, 1965; Mulligan, 1971; Till and others, 1986).

Comment (Geology): Age = Quaternary.

Comment (Production): Production Notes = The beach gold placer, reworked from the ancestral Daniels Creek channel, produced 29,000 ounces from about 1,000 feet of the shoreline in 1900. Total placer production from the Bluff area (Daniels Creek, modern beaches, and offshore submerged channels or beaches; see ARDF locality SO006) is estimated to be about 90,000 ounces (Mulligan, 1971, p. 7).

References

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): 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): 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): Brooks, A.H., Richardson, G. B., and Collier, A. J., 1901, Reconnaissance in the Cape Nome and Norton Bay regions, Alaska, in 1900: U.S. Geological Survey Special Publication, p. 1-180.

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.

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