Quartz Creek Occurrence (Ear Mountain area), Port Clarence Mining District, Nome Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Quartz Creek Occurrence (Ear Mountain area)	Occurrence
Port Clarence Mining District	Mining District
Nome Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Quartz Creek is an east tributrary to Tuttle Creek that drains the southwest flank of Ear Mountain. It crosses the contact zone, and has headwaters in, the Ear Mountain granite stock (Sainsbury, 1972). Ear Mountain is an isolated upland reaching 2,329 feet elevation in the north-central Teller D-3 quadrangle. Three USBM churn-drill holes were completed at about 370 feet elevation and two were completed at about 680 feet elevation on this creek (Mulligan, 1959, p. 20). Coordinates for this occurrence are for the location at the lower elevation. This is locality 51 of Cobb and Sainsbury (1972). Cobb (1975) summarized references to this location under the name 'Quartz Cr.'.
Geology: Quartz Creek crosses the contact zone, and has headwaters in, the Ear Mountain granite stock (Sainsbury, 1972). This is a Late Cretaceous (76.7 +/- 2.9 my; Hudson and Arth, 1983, p. 769) composite biotite granite that intrudes an impure and schistose carbonate sequence, with some metapelitic rocks, of unknown but probable Paleozoic age. Three USBM churn-drill holes were completed at about 370 feet elevation and two were completed at about 680 feet elevation on this creek (Mulligan, 1959, p. 20). Coordinates for this occurrence are for the location at the lower elevation. These churn-drill holes encountered 3 to 6.5 feet of gravel. The lower part of the gravel and adjacent bedrock contained a trace of tin per cubic yard in two of the holes at 370 feet elevation. Minerals identified in samples here include quartz, calcite, oligoclase, orthoclase, garnet, diopside, and traces of pyrite, limonite, idocrase, tourmaline, epidote, chlorite, biotite, actinolite, and muscovite. Tin-bearing minerals were not identified (Mulligan, 1959, p. 30) although heavy mineral concentrates from this creek contained monazite, zircon, cassiterite, zenotime, apatite, and scapolite (Killeen and Ordway, 1955, p. 81-82).
Workings: A total of 5 churn-drill holes were completed on this creek (Mulligan, 1959, p. 20).
Age: Quaternary
Reserves: Not defined

Commodities (Major) - Sn
Development Status: None
Deposit Model: Alluvial tin placer (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39e)

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	TE062

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References