Little Squaw; Cosine; Sine; Crystal; Big Squaw Quartz; Parabola; Engineers Exploration Syndicate; Idaho-Alaska Corp. Mine, Chandalar Mining District, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Little Squaw; Cosine; Sine; Crystal; Big Squaw Quartz; Parabola; Engineers Exploration Syndicate; Idaho-Alaska Corp. Mine	Mine
Chandalar Mining District	Mining District
Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

See also: Mikado Mine (CH045). There may be some confusion in the literature between the Little Squaw and Mikado mines because for a considerable time in recent years, the Little Squaw Mining Company which includes both properties was prominent in the press and the literature. The names Idaho-Alaska Corp. and Engineers Exploration Syndicate which are also associated with this property refer to a transaction in 1932 in which the Idaho-Alaska Corp. took over the leases and options on various properties in the Chandalar district formerly held by the Engineers Exploration Syndicate. Other site names are names of claims on or near the mine.
Location: The Little Squaw mine is approximately 3 miles south of the southeast end of Squaw Lake on the ridge between Little Squaw and Squaw Creeks; it is approximately 3 miles above Little Squaw Lake (in section 34, T. 32 N., R. 3 W., of the Fairbanks Meridian). The mine location is shown by a mine symbol on the current USGS topographic map and the location is also shown on fig. 2 in Chipp (1970). The location is accurate.
Geology: The Little Squaw mine was worked by a 185-foot adit with a raise to the surface at 160 feet and a 60-foot winze at 135 feet that were completed between 1910 and 1933 (Cobb, 1983 (OFR 83-278); Stanford, 1931). A road from the Little Squaw to a mill site on Spring Creek was built in 1909-10. Twenty-seven tons of ore from the Little Squaw mine that were processed at a mill on the property recovered an average recovery of $22 per ton (at $20 per ounce of gold); the recovery probably was only the free gold. In 1912, a 3-stamp mill was brought to Big Creek to test the Little Squaw ore and used until 1915. Considerable development work was conducted in the area beginning in 1960 and has been reported to include 1,500 feet of underground workings, surface trenching, and installation of a 100-ton-per-day mill. While most of this work probably focused on the nearby Mikado property, some of the work was probably performed on the Little Squaw mine as well. In 2004, Little Squaw Gold Mining Company controlled 8,550 acres of patented and unpatented mining claims in the Chandalar district which include the Little Squaw mine. The company contracted a district-scale analysis of the placer and lode gold potential of the district by Pacific Rim Geological Consulting, Inc. This study was completed in April, 2004 (Barker and Bundtzen, 2004). Little Squaw Gold Mining Company is currently (2005) soliciting funds to undertake placer and lode gold exploration activities recommended in that report. The vein on the Little Squaw property is one of several auriferous quartz veins in an area trending northeast from the heads of Tobin and Big creeks to Squaw and Little Squaw creeks. In general, most of the gold-bearing quartz veins in this area are in or near steeply-dipping, northwest-trending normal faults in Devonian quartz-muscovite schist, phyllite, and quartzite intruded by Devonian mafic sills and dikes (Chipp, 1970). The mafic intrusions have been metamorphosed to greenstone or greenschist. Major structural features include large-scale northeast-trending anticlines and synclines, northeast-trending thrusts, and the northwest-trending, high-angle cross faults. Most of the veins are less than 10 feet thick and are discontinuous, pinching out within a few hundred feet or less. The veins are composed principally of white crystalline to microcrystalline quartz, and their sulfide content is generally less than 5 percent. The principal sulfides (in relative order of abundance) are arsenopyrite, galena, sphalerite, and pyrite. Scorodite and limonite are commonly oxidation products. The quartz veins exhibit evidence of post-depositional shearing, indicating that the veins were emplaced before or during fault movement. The genesis of these gold deposits is still in question; various authors have hypothesized genetic links to a variety of felsic and mafic igneous rocks from which the gold was remobilized during metamorphism (Mertie, 1925; Boadway, 1933; Chipp, 1970; Dillon, 1982). The Little Squaw vein is generally described as brecciated and recrystallized quartz containing free gold, pyrite, arsenopyrite, galena, and sphalerite. Ashworth (1983) described two generations of quartz: (1) 'barren' massive, white, coarsely crystalline quartz on the hanging wall that is generally devoid of sulfides; and (2) 'main stage' quartz in the footwall that contains smeared arsenopyrite and scorodite, and gold that forms blebs in the quartz and wires in the vugs. At the surface, the vein is 4 feet wide and dips approximately 80 degrees south. At the bottom of a 60-foot winze the dip flattens to 60 degrees south, and the vein reportedly consists of several quartz stringers with abundant arsenopyrite. The vein averages 67 inches wide and consists mostly of barren quartz except for an 8- to 12-inch-wide footwall zone which appears streaked and ribbony due to abundant pyrite and arsenopyrite. Native gold, as flakes or wires, is common at the Little Squaw. In 1933, the vein was described as having a proven length of 200 feet and a depth of 130 feet with a grade of $38.50 per ton over a 4-foot width ($20 per ounce of gold) (Boadway, 1933). In 1934, a weighted average value of 0.505 ounce of gold per ton was determined by using the lower of duplicate assays.
Workings: The property was worked by a 185-foot adit with a raise to the surface at 160 feet and a 60-foot winze at 135 feet that were completed between 1910 and 1933 (Cobb, 1983 (OFR 83-278); Stanford, 1931). A road from the Little Squaw to a mill site on Spring Creek was built in 1909-10. Twenty-seven tons of ore from the Little Squaw mine that were processed at a mill on the property recovered an average recovery of $22 per ton (at $20 per ounce of gold); the recovery probably was only the free gold. In 1912, a 3-stamp mill was brought to Big Creek to test the Little Squaw ore and used until 1915. Considerable development work was conducted in the area beginning in 1960 and has been reported to include 1,500 feet of underground workings, surface trenching, and installation of a 100-ton-per-day mill. While most of this work probably focused on the nearby Mikado property, some of the work was probably performed on the Little Squaw mine as well. In 2004, Little Squaw Gold Mining Company controlled 8,550 acres of patented and unpatented mining claims in the Chandalar district which include the Little Squaw mine. The company contracted a district-scale analysis of the placer and lode gold potential of the district by Pacific Rim Geological Consulting, Inc. This study was completed in April, 2004 (Barker and Bundtzen, 2004).
Age: Middle Cretaceous(?) based on arguments by Dillon (1982) that the age of emplacement of the gold-bearing quartz veins of the Koyukuk and Chandalar districts was between the Neocomian metamorphism of the Devonian host rocks and their erosional unroofing and cooling in Albian time.
Alteration: Veins are generally oxidized to a depth of about 75 feet; the principal oxidation products include scorodite and limonite.
Production: Early production figures for the district probably combined placer and lode production and indicate that approximately 65,000 ounces of gold were produced from lode and placer through 1995. Goldfarb and others (1997) reported that lode production was 17,000 ounces of gold and the placer production was 46,000 oz. A small part of this came from the Little Squaw mine.
Reserves: Various reserve figures have been published for the Chandalar area lode properties; these typically do not differentiate reserves for specific properties. Some of these figures are as follows: 12,000 tonnes grading 75 grams of gold per ton at the Mikado and Little Squaw (Nokleberg and others, 1996); an inferred lode reserve for the Chandalar district lodes of 45,000 tons with a grade of 2 ounces of gold per ton was reported as late as 1997 (Swainbank and others, 1998). Baggs and others (1988) reported measured reserves of 9,100 metric tons grading 58.70 grams of gold per metric ton as of 1980. Some of this may have been mined.

Commodities (Major) - Au; (Minor) - Ag, Pb, Zn
Development Status: Yes; small
Deposit Model: Low-sulfide Au-quartz veins (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 36a)

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Link to USGS - Alaska:	CH040

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References