Seward Peninsula Region Alaska Gold Production
The Port Clarence district, an area of about 2,000 square miles on the west end of the Seward Peninsula, has produced small amounts of placer gold from the Bluestone and Agiapuk River basins and from a few streams that drain into Grantley Harbor. The district was prospected as early as 1898, and by 1903 an estimated $200,000 in gold had been produced (Collier and others, 1908, p. 269). Total recorded production through 1959 is about 28,000 ounces, all from placers, but 1931-46 production is not recorded. Since World War II there has been only small-scale activity.
The district is underlain by schist, limestone, and small intrusive bodies comprising the Kigluaik and Nome Groups of early Paleozoic or older age, and by Devonian (?) slate and Carboniferous (?) limestone. Stocks and dikes of granite and greenstone intrude the metasedimentary rocks. Quaternary gravels contain gold placers which are restricted in general to areas underlain by rocks of the Nome Group. These rocks seem to contain more auriferous veinlets and stringers than the other bedrock types. The foregoing account is from Collier, Hess, Smith, and Brooks (1908, p. 268-281).
SOLOMON-BLUFF DISTRICT
The camps of Bluff and Solomon, an area enclosed by lat 64°30' to 65°00' N. and long 163°30' to 164°30' W., are combined here.
Gold was first discovered in this district in 1898 in gravels along the Casadepaga River, a tributary of the Solomon River. The following year other placers were found along the Solomon and on the beach of the mouth of Daniels Creek in the Bluff camp (Brooks, in Collier and others, 1908, p. 288). The beach placers were exhausted in about a year, but more extensive placers were found along Daniels Creek and along Hurrah and Shovel Creeks in the Solomon camp. These were worked by dredges and hydraulic methods (Smith, 1910, p. 139). The only important gold-quartz mine on the Seward Peninsula was the Big Hurrah in the Solomon camp, which was active from 1900 to 1937.
A total of 251,000 ounces of placer gold has come from the Solomon-Bluff district not including production from 1931 to 1946 for which records have not been found. Lode production was 9,375 ounces; all was presumably from the Big Hurrah mine. Total production recorded for the district is 260,375 ounces. No production was recorded from 1937 through 1959.
The district is underlain by rocks belonging to the lower part of the Nome Group of early Paleozoic or older age. These are a series of schist, slate, and limestone. The metasedimentary rocks were intruded by basic igneous rocks, were later altered to schist and greenstone, and were finally intruded by basalt (Smith, 1910, p. 49-137). Unconsolidated deposits consist of coastal plain deposits, stream gravels, and high-level gravels.
The lode deposit at the Big Hurrah mine consists of several quartz veins in a dense, hard, quartzitic, graphitic schist. There is a noticeable absence of sulfides; the minerals consist almost exclusively of native gold in quartz (Smith, 1910, p. 144).
The gold in the placers, which consist of stream and beach gravels in the Bluff area and stream and bench gravels in the Solomon area, was derived from disseminations and veinlets in rocks of the Nome Group, particularly in the schist and in the vicinity of schist-limestone contacts (Smith, 1910, p. 214-216).