Archibald Creek; Archibald Gulch Mine, Koyukuk Mining District, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Archibald Creek; Archibald Gulch Mine	Mine
Koyukuk Mining District	Mining District
Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

See also Nolan Creek (WI101).
Location: Archibald Creek is a west-flowing tributary to Nolan Creek. Its mouth is about 1.75 miles above the mouth of Nolan Creek on Wiseman Creek. Most of the mining activity on Archibald Creek has been along the lower 0.5 mile of the creek; the coordinates are about at the center of mining. The location is accurate.
Geology: Placer gold has been mined both from the modern channel and a deep channel on Archibald Creek. The modern channel was mined near the mouth of the creek in the early 1900's and was being mined about 3/8 mile upstream in 1937. The gravel in the modern channel is coarse and subangular; it contains many boulders. Five to twelve feet of frozen gravel, covered by 3 feet of muck and a foot of moss, overlie soft, schist bedrock. The gold is distributed throughout the gravel and occurs both as fine particles worn flat and smooth, and as coarse particles that are rough and porous. The average fineness of the gold is 905 and the value of the ground is about $0.44 per square foot of bedrock (gold at $35 per ounce) (Reed, 1938). The deep channel which is 5 to to 14 feet wide is on the north side of the creek at a depth of about 25 feet near the mouth of the creek; it rises upstream to coalesce with the modern channel. Seven to nine feet of frozen, coarse, subangular gravel overlies bedrock described as alternating bands of black graphitic and yellow schist (Reed, 1938). The gravel is overlain by 16 to 18 feet of muck and a foot of moss. Unlike the modern channel, the deep channel is free of large boulders. The gold in the deep channel occurs both as coarse, worn and rounded particles, and as coarse, porous and unworn particles. Reed (1938) reports values of approximately $2.11 per square foot of bedrock (gold at $35 per ounce) and an average fineness of 904. A stibnite vein was reported during drift mining on Archibald Creek (Ebbley and Wright, 1948.
Workings: The creek and bench placers have been mined by hand and hydraulic methods, and the deep channel by drifting. Mulligan (1974) reported hand mining in 1974.
Age: Quaternary.
Production: Maddren (1913) reported $6,000 of gold (about 300 ounces) was produced from 1900 to 1909 . Eden (2000) reports a total of 5429.90 ounces of gold were produced from Archibald Creek between 1904 and 1999. Most of the production from Archibald Creek has been from the buried channels. Tri-Con Mining mined on Archibald Creek as late as 1991 (Bundtzen and others, 1992).

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

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	WI113

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References