The probable lost deposits of Alaska

[Alex Burke]

I had the day off so I spent some time trying to find one of the 112 probable undiscovered gold deposits of Alaska
A couple of times I've seen Gravina Island mentioned as a probable deposit area and reading a couple of papers on it I thought it looked interesting. I realized it's not the kind of deposit I am hoping to find someday but I thought I'd look it up anyways as to me it's fun and you never know... The geologists put lots of question marks with (Au?) on the map of the area which I usually don't see too much, there wasn't much mining, claim history or sampling done there so the probability is based on what they consider a permissive tract and suitable geo I think. I layered a geo map over the area in GE and the areas where the (Au?) symbols appear are closed to mineral entry or private property once I turned on PLSS layers and looked at the Alaska land management site But there are 111 more left out there and I will try again next week

I'm interested if the GE overlay I saved works on your guy's computer with the map layered on top as I'm not too good with GE and haven't tried layering maps before. Is there a way to just turn on a layer with geo information on rather than going through layering the map like this? It isn't too hard but it takes too much time to do it and it seems like there might be a dataset layer for this I'm maybe missing somewhere on the web. Here are a couple of kmz files I saved and some pics.


View attachment Gravinawidekmlorz.kmz

View attachment GravinaB.kmz

 

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[tim907]

I'm curious as to where you came up with the list of 112 lost deposits of Alaska, is it from a book or forum post some where?

 

[chlsbrns]

Here are some with lat/long in Alaska and a lot of other places

USGS Open-File Report 02-198

USGS MATTERS!

 

[Alex Burke]

I'm curious as to where you came up with the list of 112 lost deposits of Alaska, is it from a book or forum post some where?

I got it from a USGS report/assessment Chsl posted a link that will get you a lot of info it was a permissive tract study that led to other studies. Many of the ARDF files of known deposits and the unknown deposits permissive tracts fall in land no longer available or they are obvious sort of and claimed by companies in blocks. So I would say it's a lot less than 112 but there are definitely a few left to be found.

Especially if you consider lakes are sediment traps and the terrain dictated access or the route to limited areas during the gold rush there and even today. Also a small orogenic fault rich vein system is not really considered valuable to gold companies looking for tonnage and grade so many of the smaller high value areas that may be valuable to small miners may still be out there to be found in my opinion.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Also a small orogenic fault rich vein system is not really considered valuable to gold companies looking for tonnage and grade so many of the smaller high value areas that may be valuable to small miners may still be out there to be found in my opinion.

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[goldenIrishman]

There are a lot of small deposits scattered around Arizona that the big boys don't want to bother with but are great for the smaller operators. In most cases the downfall of trying to work these deposits is the lack of water. We all know that wet processing is the most effective way to recover placer gold but unless you want to haul water you're pretty much stuck with drywashing. Until I've found a good deposit, I've stopped hauling the recirc system out to the field and am drywashing to test areas. This is of course providing that the ground dries out after those storms that rolled through here last week.