Auburn Creek Mine (Ravine), Council District, Nome Borough, Alaska, USA

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Location: Auburn Creek is a headwater tributary to American Creek. This is locality 47 of Cobb (1972, MF 445; 1978, OF 78-181). Cobb (1972, MF 445) shows the location to be just upstream of the Solomon D-5 quadrangle boundary but Sainsbury and others (1972, OFR 512) show the location to be further downstream, just inside the Solomon D-6 quadrangle. The location shown by Sainsbury and others (1972, OFR 512) is used here. It is about 0.5 mile upstream from the confluence of Auburn and American Creeks.
Geology: Smith (1909) reports that the gravels of Auburn Creek carry gold upstream to headwater reaches but Sainsbury and others (1972) show the location of placer workings to be localized about 0.5 miles upstream from the mouth. The gold was coarse, on clay layers rather than bedrock, and had a fineness of 945. Heavy mineral concentrates contained garnet, ilmenite, magnetite, and cinnabar (Smith, 1909). Marble bedrock contained underground channels (karst ?) that captured surface water and solution-etched boulders were present in stream gravels. Bedrock in the area is part of a lower Paleozoic metasedimentary assemblage (Till and others, 1986); marble in this assemblage crops out preferentially along the east side of the Auburn Creek valley.
Workings: Small-scale mining occurred here in 1908.
Age: Quaternary.

Commodities (Major) - Au; (Minor) - Hg
Development Status: Yes; small
Deposit Model: Placer Au-PGE (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a).

References

Cobb, E.H., 1972, Metallic mineral resources map of the Solomon quadrangle, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-445, 1 sheet, scale 1:250,000. 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. Sainsbury, C.L., Hudson, T.L., Ewing, R., and Marsh, W.R., 1972, Reconnaissance geologic maps of the Solomon D-5 and C-5 quadrangles, Seward Peninsula, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 511, 12 p., 2 sheets, scale 1:63,360. Smith, P.S., 1909, Recent developments in southern Seward Peninsula: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 379-F, p. 267-301. 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.

Mineral List

Cinnabar 'Garnet Group'

Gold Ilmenite

Magnetite

5 entries listed. 4 valid minerals.