Submarine Beach

Site Name

Primary: Submarine Beach

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Commodity

Primary: Silver
Primary: Gold
Secondary: Tungsten
Secondary: Copper

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Location

State: Alaska
District: Nome

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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: Producer
Operation Type: Unknown
Years of Production:
Organization:
Significant:

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Physiography

Not available

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Mineral Deposit Model

Model Name: Placer Au-PGE

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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: Arsenopyrite
Ore: Chalcopyrite
Ore: Gold
Ore: Ilmenite
Ore: Magnetite
Ore: Pyrite
Ore: Scheelite
Gangue: Garnet

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Comments

Comment (Exploration): Status = Active

Comment (Reference): Primary Reference = Metcalfe and Tuck, 1942

Comment (Reserve-Resource): Reserves = The Submarine Beach mine area contains a gold resource that could be mined under favorable economic conditions.

Comment (Geology): Geologic Description = Submarine Beach is the oldest recognized placer deposit that developed on the abrasion platform of the Third Beach strandline. It is irregular, but has a crudely linear trend from near the mouth of Dry Creek at Nome west as far as Jess Creek in the Nome C-2 quadrangle. Average elevations on the Inner and Outer elements of the beach are below sea level, at about -20 and -35 feet respectively, but the range of elevations is between about -10 and -40 feet (Metcalfe and Tuck, 1942, p. 36). Near Nome, the deposit is on silt false bedrock. Near its western recognized limit at Jess Creek, Submarine Beach is on schistose bedrock. In the area west of Nome, where the deposit has been dredged, the overall configuration suggests a fan-like placer gold deposit that could have accumlated at the mouth of an ancestral Anvil Creek. According to Metcalfe and Tuck (1942, p. 36), 'The wide distribution of gold in general indicates that it may have been the result of an old beachline that was higher than the sea that destroyed it.' In common with the other abrasion so called beaches, such as Center Creek (NM286), Intermediate (NM287), and Monroeville (NM257), sulfides are abundant in the placer concentrates, along with some scheelite. The sulfide minerals are principally arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, and pyrite. Chalcopyrite was especially abundant in the 'Outer' beach (Moffit, 1913, p. 119). Garnet occurs, but it does not form the ruby sand lenses that typify the true strandline beaches, such as Present (NM254), Second (NM256), and Third (NM258). The sulfide minerals probably contain gold. In 1939, samples of the Submarine Beach deposit contained 1.059 pounds of sulfide per cubic yard in the interval above bedrock, and cleaned sulfide concentrate contained 14.10 dollars worth of gold per ton of concentrates. Although the sulfides were cleaned by panning and amalgamation, some of the gold probably is still present as very fine grained free gold. The placer gold of Submarine Beach was relatively coarse compared with other beach or abrasion deposits; numerous nuggets weighed as much as 0.5 ounce (Moffit, 1913, p. 118). The Submarine beaches were discovered in 1907 and were developed by shafts about 70 feet deep. One shaft in the 'Inner' beach bottomed at an elevation of about -20 feet (Smith, 1909, p. 271-273; Moffit, 1913, p. 118-119). The deposit consisted of alternating layers of sand and gravel, gravel predominating at depth. The gravel consisted mainly of 'slate' (their term), greenstone, schist, feldspathic schist, and limestone (marble). It also contained boulders of granite and quartz of as much as 2 feet across. The quartz boulders were semi-angular but with apparently water-rounded corners. Sand layers in the beach also contained mollusk shells, more broken, hence inferred to be older, than the shells in Intermediate Beach. The Submarine Bench deposits were mined from about 1908 into the 1990s. One large bucket-line dredge operated on Submarine Beach from about 1975 until 1995.

Comment (Workings): Workings / Exploration = Submarine Beach was discovered in 1907 and was at first worked from underground drift mines in frozen ground. After the development of cold-water thawing in the 1920's, the deposit was worked by bucket-line dredges that mined the thaw-fields after one or two years of thawing. The Submarine Beach was reopened after gold was allowed to seek a free-market price (Kastelic, 1975). The mine was shut down in 1995, when thawing and other operating costs exceeded the value of the ground, which is on the order of 0.01 to 0.015 ounce of gold per cubic yard of mining section (Bundtzen and others, 1995). High-resolution seismic surveys and drilling related to the development of the offshore gold resource have contributed to the knowledge of the Submarine Beaches (Nelson and Hopkins, 1972; Tagg and Greene, 1973).

Comment (Geology): Age = Late Tertiary to Pleistocene. Fossils in the Submarine deposits were reported as late Miocene or Pliocene (Moffit, 1913, p. 45-48). Hopkins, MacNeil, and Leopold (1960) postulate that Submarine Beach could be as old as Pliocene.

Comment (Deposit): Model Name = Marine placer gold deposit; intergrading marine abrasion and fan-like deposits reworked by offshore currents (Cox and singer, 1986; model 39).

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References

Reference (Deposit): Bundtzen, T.K., Reger, R.D., Laird, G.M., Pinney, D.S., Clautice, K.H., Liss, S.A., and Cruse, G.R., 1994, Progress report on the geology and mineral resources of the Nome mining district: Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, Public Data-File 94-39, 21 p., 2 sheets, scale 1:63,360.

Reference (Deposit): Smith, P.S., 1909, The Iron Creek region, p. 302-354, in Brooks, A.H., and others, Mineral resources of Alaska, Report on progress of investigations in 1908: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 379.

Reference (Deposit): Kastelic, W.R., 1975, Gold placer exploration, Nome, Alaska: Colorado Mining Association, 1975 Mining Yearbook, p. 85-90.

Reference (Deposit): Cobb, E.H., 1978, Summary of references to mineral occurrences (other than mineral fuels and construction materials) in the Nome quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File report 78-93, 213 p.

Reference (Deposit): Tagg, A.R., and Greene, H.G., 1973, High resolution seismic survey of an offshore area near Nome, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 795-A, p. A1-A23.

Reference (Deposit): Nelson, C.H., and Hopkins, D.M., 1972, Sedimentary processes and distribution of particulate gold in the northern Bering Sea: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 689, 27 p., 1 plate.

Reference (Deposit): Cobb, E.H., 1972, Metallic mineral resources map of the Nome quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-463, 2 sheets, scale 1:250,000.

Reference (Deposit): Moffit, F.H., 1913, Geology of the Nome and Grand Central quadrangles, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 533, 140 p.

Reference (Deposit): Metcalfe, J.B., and Tuck, Ralph, 1942, Placer gold deposits of the Nome district, Alaska: Report for U.S. Smelting, Refining, and Mining Co., 175 p.

Reference (Deposit): Hopkins, D.M., MacNeil, F.S. and Leopold, E.B., 1960, The coastal plain at Nome, Alaska, A late Cenozoic type section for the Bering Sea region, in Chronology and climatology of the Quaternary: International Geological Congress, 21st, Copenhagen , Proceedings, Part 4, p. 46-57.

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