Cinnabar Creek placer Prospect, Aniak Mining District, Dillingham Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Cinnabar Creek placer Prospect	Prospect
Aniak Mining District	Mining District
Dillingham Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: This placer cinnabar prospect is located in a northeast headwater tributary of Cinnabar Creek locally called Cinnabar Run and Cinnabar Gulch. The placer is about 1 mile long from its origin as a residual deposit over the Cinnabar Creek lode deposit (TA001) at the head of Cinnabar Gulch. The map site is the approximate midpoint of the placer on Cinnabar Run, in the SW1/4 of section 12, T 8 N, R 55 W, of the Seward Meridian. It is 0.5 mile north-northeast of the north end ot the Cinnabar Creek airstrip. This prospect is accurately located. It is locality 9 of Cobb (1972 [MF 384]; 1976 [OF 76-606]).
Geology: Russell Schaeffer and Harvey Winchell found this placer cinnabar deposit in 1941, the year they staked placer claims on Cinnabar Creek, Cinnabar Run, and Cinnabar Gulch (Rutledge, 1950, p. 3). The deposit was subsequently explored by dozer cuts in its upper part and by many test pits. The alluvium in the drainage is only about 100 to 150 feet wide, and in places the paystreak is only about 25 feet wide. The paystreak is at least 3,100 feet long. It is covered by up to 18 feet of colluvium/alluvium in Cinnabar Gulch and by about 7 feet of alluvial gravel along Cinnabar Run and Cinnabar Creek. Although Cady and others (1955) reported that the paystreak was only about 2 to 6 inches thick, test pits indicate that the minable section commonly is 5 feet thick and in the upstream part of the deposit, up to 14 feet thick (Rutledge, 1950, fig. 7). The placer contains many coarse nuggets to fist size of finely crystalline cinnabar, and many nuggets of cinnabar intergrown with quartz, stibnite, and breccia fragments of siltstone. The nuggets are angular in Cinnabar Gulch and well-rounded downstream along Cinnabar Run. Data from 14 test pits, mostly along Cinnabar Run, show that the paystreak is continuous, although locally narrow, and contains 0.21 to 0.84 percent Hg over mining sections varying from 5 to 14 feet thick (Rutledge, 1950, fig. 7). A few nuggets were obtained from a remnant bench placer deposit 40 feet above the Cinnabar Run flood plain.
Workings: Many test pits and some dozer trenches, including one 390 feet long and up to 18 feet deep excavated by the U. S. Bureau of Mines, have explored this placer deposit.
Age: Quaternary.
Production: Production from this placer deposit has not been reported; it is not clear if mining has taken place (Sainsbury and MacKevett, 1965, p. 42).
Reserves: It is possible that much of this deposit is still in place. If the deposit is 4,000 feet long, 25 feet wide, 5 feet thick, and averages 0.4 pounds of Hg per cubic yard, then the contained resource is about 2,200 pouinds of mercury.

Commodities (Major) - Hg; (Minor) - Sb
Development Status: Undetermined.
Deposit Model: Alluvial placer cinnabar

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	TA002

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References