Fairbanks mining district | |
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Coordinates: 64°40′N148°00′W / 64.667°N 148.000°W |
The Fairbanks mining district is a gold-mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska. Placer mining began near Fairbanks in July 1902, after Felix Pedro (real name Felice Pedroni), an Italian immigrant and Tom Gilmore discovered gold in the hills north of the Tanana and Chena Rivers in 1901. Pedro died exactly eight years after finding the richest gold placer he would ever know. By 1903 a new rush started, and prospectors staked thousands of claims. However, mining results were disappointing during the summer of 1903, with little gold recovered. Then Dennis O'Shea struck it rich on Fairbanks Creek, No. 8 Above. This was one of the richest claims in the Fairbanks Mining District and paid as high as $136 to the pan (gold @ $20/ounce). Discoveries on Cleary and Ester Creeks followed, and almost two-thirds of the gold mined in the Tanana hills before 1910 came from these three creeks. Total production of gold was more than $30 million. Towns grew on every creek with a combined population of 1,600 residents. [1]
The district was and is a major producer of gold from both placer and lode deposits: placers have produced over 8 million troy ounces (250 t) of gold, lodes have yielded over 4 million ounces (110 t). [2]
Today, the largest gold producer in Alaska is the Fort Knox Gold Mine, an open-pit mine 26 miles (42 km) north of Fairbanks in the Fairbanks mining district. Gold occurs in a Cretaceous porphyritic granodiorite pluton as finely-distributed particles in and on the edges of small quartz veinlets and swarms. A NW structural fabric partially controls vein orientations. Sulfide content is low. Ore is low-grade, averaging only 0.024 ounces (0.68 g) of gold per ton of ore. Creeks draining the pluton were among the many productive gold placers in the heart of the Fairbanks district, since the early 1900s; and bedrock occurrences of gold or bismuth/telluride minerals were found near the pluton by early miners. Bulk-tonnage potential of the pluton was not known until exploration in the 1980s. Mine construction began in 1995, gold production commenced in 1997 with 3.8 million ounces (110 t) of gold resource estimated. In 2006 gold reserves equaled 2.7 million ounces (77 t) with additional resources of 1.6 million ounces (45 t) of gold. A heap-leaching component is being added to the original carbon-in-pulp vat leaching gold-recovery process. The mine and mill employ approximately 400 people on two shifts, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. The Fort Knox mine produced 333 thousand troy ounces (10.4 t) of gold in 2006.
The True North mine is a recently developed, and now suspended, open pit operation that delivered its ore to the mill at Fort Knox. It is located 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Fairbanks, on the northwest flank of Pedro Dome and approximately 11 miles (18 km) from the Ft. Knox Mine. Both True North and Ft. Knox are owned by Fairbanks Gold Mining Incorporated, a subsidiary of Kinross Gold Corporation.
The Summitville mine was a gold mining site in the United States, located in Rio Grande County, Colorado 25 miles (40 km) south of Del Norte. It is remembered for the environmental damage caused in the 1980s by the leakage of mining by-products into local waterways and then the Alamosa River.
In the United States, copper mining has been a major industry since the rise of the northern Michigan copper district in the 1840s. In 2017, the US produced 1.27 million metric tonnes of copper, worth $8 billion, making it the world's fourth largest copper producer, after Chile, China, and Peru. Copper was produced from 23 mines in the US. Top copper producing states in 2014 were Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana. Minor production also came from Idaho and Missouri. As of 2014, the US had 45 million tonnes of known remaining reserves of copper, the fifth largest known copper reserves in the world, after Chile, Australia, Peru, and Mexico.
In the United States, gold mining has taken place continually since the discovery of gold at the Reed farm in North Carolina in 1799. The first documented occurrence of gold was in Virginia in 1782. Some minor gold production took place in North Carolina as early as 1793, but created no excitement. The discovery on the Reed farm in 1799 which was identified as gold in 1802 and subsequently mined marked the first commercial production.
Silver mining in the United States began on a major scale with the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1858. The industry suffered greatly from the demonetization of silver in 1873 by the Coinage Act of 1873, known pejoratively as the "Crime of 73", but silver mining continues today.
Gold mining in Colorado, a state of the United States, has been an industry since 1858. It also played a key role in the establishment of the state of Colorado.
Silver mining in Colorado has taken place since the 1860s. In the past, Colorado called itself the Silver State.
Silver mining in Nevada, a state of the United States, began in 1858 with the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the first major silver-mining district in the United States. Nevada calls itself the "Silver State." Nevada is the nation's second-largest producer of silver, after Alaska. In 2014 Nevada produced 10.93 million troy ounces of silver, of which 6.74 million ounces were as a byproduct of the mining of gold. The largest byproducers were the Hycroft Mine, the Phoenix Mine, the Midas Mine and Round Mountain.
Gold mining in Alaska, a state of the United States, has been a major industry and impetus for exploration and settlement since a few years after the United States acquired the territory in 1867 from the Russian Empire. Russian explorers discovered placer gold in the Kenai River in 1848, but no gold was produced. Gold mining started in 1870 from placers southeast of Juneau, Alaska.
Gold mining in Nevada, a state of the United States, is a major industry, and one of the largest sources of gold in the world. In 2018 Nevada produced 5,581,160 troy ounces, representing 78% of US gold and 5.0% of the world's production. Total gold production recorded from Nevada from 1835 to 2017 totals 205,931,000 troy ounces (6,405.2 t), worth US$322.6 billion at 2020 values. Much of Nevada's gold production comes from large open pit mining using heap leaching recovery.
The Leadville mining district, located in the Colorado Mineral Belt, was the most productive silver-mining district in the state of Colorado and hosts one of the largest lead-zinc-silver deposits in the world. Oro City, an early Colorado gold placer mining town located about a mile east of Leadville in California Gulch, was the location to one of the richest placer gold strikes in Colorado, with estimated gold production of 120,000–150,000 ozt, worth $2.5 to $3 million at the then-price of $20.67 per troy ounce.
The Ruby–Poorman mining district in the U.S. state of Alaska produced nearly a half million ounces of gold, all from placer mines. Some of the largest gold nuggets found in Alaska are from the district, which lies along the Yukon River. The placers are mostly deeply buried, and most were originally worked with shafts and drifts. Dozens of creeks in the district were mined, many more bear gold prospects. Cassiterite, platinum, scheelite, allanite, and native bismuth have been recovered along with gold from placer mines in the district.
The Nome mining district, also known as the Cape Nome mining district, is a gold mining district in the U.S. state of Alaska. It was discovered in 1898 when Erik Lindblom, Jafet Lindeberg and John Brynteson, the "Three Lucky Swedes", found placer gold deposits on Anvil Creek and on the Snake River few miles from the future site of Nome. Word of the strike caused a major gold rush to Nome in the spring of 1899.
The Willow Creek mining district, also known as the Independence Mine/Hatcher Pass district, is a gold-mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska. Underground hard-rock mining of gold from quartz veins accounts for most of the mineral wealth extracted from the Hatcher Pass area. The first mining efforts were placer mining of stream gravels, and placer mining in the area has continued sporadically to this day. Robert Hatcher discovered gold and staked the first claim in the Willow Creek valley in September 1906. The first lode mill in the area started operating in 1908. Underground mining continued at a variety of locations around the pass until 1951. In the 1980s one of the area's hard-rock mines was briefly re-opened. At least one mining company is actively exploring for gold in the area now. Through 2006 the district produced 667-thousand ounces of hard rock gold and 60-thousand ounces of placer gold.
The Juneau mining district is a gold mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska.
The Admiralty mining district is a mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska which consists of Admiralty Island. Silver and base metals are mined, with gold recovered as a by-product.
Mount Prindle is a granitic mountain in the Yukon–Tanana Uplands, and is located approximately 45 miles (72 km) north-northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. The plutons that form the core of the Mount Prindle massif are Late Cretaceous or early Tertiary age. These plutons intruded older metamorphic rocks. Mount Prindle exhibits classic glacial landforms, unlike most of the surrounding Yukon–Tanana Uplands. It is in the Circle Mining District and many of the surrounding creeks have been or are being mined for placer gold. The area has also been prospected for tin and rare earth minerals. Mine roads and hiking trails provide access to the mountain. A 900 feet (270 m) granite wall on an eastern spur of the massif is an attraction for rock climbers.
The history of Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska, can be traced to the founding of a trading post by E.T. Barnette on the south bank of the Chena River on August 26, 1901. The area had seen human occupation since at least the last ice age, but a permanent settlement was not established at the site of Fairbanks until the start of the 20th century.
The Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine, formerly and historically the Cresson Mine, is an active gold mine located near the town of Victor, in the Cripple Creek mining district in the US state of Colorado. The richest gold mine in Colorado history, it is the only remaining significant producer of gold in the state, and produced 322,000 troy ounces of gold in 2019, and reported 3.45 million troy ounces of Proven and Probable Reserves as at December 31, 2019. It was owned and operated by AngloGold Ashanti through its subsidiary, the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company (CC&V), until 2015, when it sold the mine to Newmont Mining Corporation.
The Fort Knox Gold Mine is an open pit gold mine, 9 mi (14 km) east of Fox in the Fairbanks mining district of Alaska. It is owned and operated by Toronto-based Kinross Gold. Originally staked in 1913, after very minor mining at the location the property sat idle until being restaked in 1980. Following the initial exploration discovery in 1987, in 1992 the project was purchased by Amax Gold, which brought the mine to production. Amax Gold merged with Kinross Gold in 1998.
The Goodpaster River is an 91-mile (146 km) major tributary of the Tanana River in the U.S. state of Alaska. Its name in the Middle Tanana dialect of the Lower Tanana language is Jiiz Cheeg. Goodpaster River is a stream located just 6.6 miles from Big Delta, in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area.