Willow Creek district the principal producing mine is that of the Willow Creek Mines, Inc., on Craigie Creek. The ore at this property comes from quartz veins in a diorite country rock. Through selective mining only the richer ore is now being milled, and the developments have not yet reached a depth of more than a few hundred feet below the surface. Other producing gold-lode properties in this district are the Fern and Gold Cord, but prospecting and development were carried on at several other properties throughout the district.

In the Fairbanks district the lode gold occurs principally in quartz veins cutting the schist country rock and apparently having a close relationship to nearby intrusive masses of granitic rocks. The principal producing mine in this district is that of the Cleary Hill Mines, in the valley of a tributary of Cleary Creek-one of the richest placer fields of this famous district. Nearly a dozen other lode mines were active in the district, and some of them added notable amounts of gold to the total of the district.

Among the districts that have been grouped in a following table under the term "other districts" the most productive, arranged in the relative order of their output of lode gold, are the Nabesna district, which lies north of the Wrangell Mountains, of the Copper River region; Kenai Peninsula, including the Nuka Bay area, the area south of Hope, and the hills north of Girdwood; the Nixon Fork district, in the Kuskokwim region; and the mines in the vicinity of Valdez, in the Prince William Sound region. In most of these districts the production came from a single mine, so that to avoid disclosing the output of the individuals it has been necessary to combine the statistics.

Prospecting for gold lodes was continued at many other places throughout the Territory, though, so far as reported, none of them afforded any production of ore except such as was recovered in the course of development work. Among places of this sort may be mentioned the property of the Ramors, on Golconda Creek, in the Breamer district of the Copper River region; quartz lodes in the vicinity of Tiekel, some 40 miles northeast of Valdez; in the Kantishna district on the Quigley properties, near Friday Creek, about 60 miles west of McKinley Park station of the Alaska Railroad; in the Chisana district, north of the Alaska Range near the international boundary; in the Yentna district, of the Cook Inlet region; and in Seward Peninsula, in the extreme western Alaska.

GOLD LODES

Alaska lode mines yielded $7,052,000 in gold in 1934, so their production was worth considerably more than in 1933, when the production was $4,549,000. The gold derived from lodes was about 44 percent of the entire gold production of the Territory for 1934. The proportion of lode gold to placer gold was somewhat less in 1934 than in 1933, when it was 47 to 53.

Gold produced from gold-lode mines in Alaska in 1934, by districts

Nearly 70 percent of the total lode-gold production of Alaska in 1934 came from mines in southeastern Alaska. The outstanding lode mine of this region is that of the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mining Co., near Juneau. This mine in 1933 was the second largest gold producer in the entire United States and has long been outstanding as an example of a low-grade deposit operated with noteworthy skill and efficiency. The next largest of the other lode mines of this region are the Chichagoff and the Hirst-Chichagoff mines, on the west coast of Chichagoff Island.

GOLD PLACERS

Placer gold produced in 1934 had a total value of $8,955,000. The following table shows, by regions, the output of placer gold in 1934 and 1933:

Value of placer gold produced in Alaska in 1934 and 1933

As shown by this table, the largest yield of placer gold came from the Yukon region and the next largest from camps on Seward Peninsula. The present trend is for the placer production to come more and more from larger, well-equipped mines and less from individuals or small groups of prospectors.

DREDGES

The total value of gold recovered by dredges in 1934 was $6,725,000, of which the greater part came from 17 dredges in the Yukon region and the rest from 12 dredges in Seward Peninsula and 1 in the Kuskokwim region. Over 75 percent of the gold produced from placers in 1934 was mined by dredges. This is a high percentage, but the trend of placer mining seems to be toward this type of mining. It is estimated that about 10,445,000 cubic yards of gravel were handled by dredges in 1934, with an average yield of 64.4 cents a cubic yard.

SILVER

None of the ores that are mined in Alaska are valuable solely for the silver they contain, and by far the greater part of the silver that is produced occurs as a relatively minor constituent in ores whose principal value lies in some other metal. More than 70 percent of the silver produced from Alaska in the past has been derived from ores that are principally valuable for their copper content. How small the percentage of silver is that occurs in these copper ores may be gathered from the fact that seldom is it as much as 2 ounces to the ton of ore, and the average amount recovered is rarely as much as 111⁄2 ounces to the ton. Inasmuch as none of the mines classified as distinctly copper mines were in operation during 1934, it follows that no silver is credited to that source.

All the gold-lode mines yield some silver in addition to their gold, and some silver is also contained in the gold that is recovered from the Alaska placer mines. The total silver produced in 1934 from all sources in Alaska amounted to 154,700 ounces, valued at $100,000. Compared with 1933 this was a slight decrease in quantity but an increase of about $45,000 in value. Of this total 118,250 fine ounces, worth $76,440, were derived from the lode mines, and 36,450 fine ounces, worth $23,560, from the placer mines.

COPPER

The very low price of copper, which in 1933 led to the suspension of mining at the large copper mines of the Territory, still exercised such a deterrent effect that these mines remained closed in 1934 also. Although these principal mines were idle, this by no means indicates that their ore deposits have been exhausted. Indeed, the shafts and other underground openings, as well as the surface plants and equipment, are kept in good stand-by condition, and small crews are retained to keep up the necessary maintenance work. The only copper produced from Alaska ores in 1934 was recovered as a byproduct of ores whose principal value lay in other metals they contained, notably gold, and is estimated as 121,000 pounds, valued at $9,700.

LEAD

The lead produced from Alaska ores in 1934 amounted to 1,679,000 pounds. At the average price of lead for the year of 3.7 cents a pound, the total value of the output was $62,100. The lead is derived entirely as a byproduct from ores mined principally for their other metallic content. Thus, the greatest amount was recovered from the sulphides contained in the lode-gold ores-the AlaskaJuneau mine alone accounting for nearly 1,663,000 pounds of lead.

PLATINUM

In 1934 the largest amount of platinum metals produced in Alaska came from placers. Most of the placer platinum that was sold during the year came from several streams in the Goodnews Bay district, near the mouth of the Kuskokwim, where there was a greatly increased output due to the new installation of mechanical equip

ment. A small amount came from deposits on Dime and Quartz Creeks, in the eastern part of Seward Peninsula. Reopening of the old mines on Kasaan Peninsula, in the Ketchikan district of southeastern Alaska, resulted in the production of considerable palladium, one of the platinum group of metals. The total production of platinum metals is estimated as 3,101 crude ounces, or 2,555 fine ounces, which, at the average price prevailing for the year was worth $85,600.

TIN

Stream tin, or casserite, has been found in concentrates in sluice boxes of placer operations at many places in Alaska, and tin minerals have also been found in veins in the mineralized country rock of the York or Port Clarence district of western Seward Peninsula. In the past, tin worth more than a million dollars has been produced from Alaska deposits, but so far as reported only a few thousand pounds of tin ore were shipped from Alaska in 1934. This ore had an estimated content of 8,275 pounds of metallic tin and was worth $4,300.

COAL

The total quantity of coal produced by Alaska mines in 1934 was 107,500 tons, valued at $451,500. This marks an increase from the amount produced in 1933, but it is essentially the same as the production for the past 6 or 8 years. In addition to the coal mined in Alaska, 42,992 tons of coal were imported from fields outside of Alaska, and no Alaska coal was exported, thus indicating a domestic consumption for the year of about 150,500 tons. The principal producing Alaska coal mines in 1934 were those of the Evan Jones Coal Co., in the Matanuska district, and the Healy River Coal Corporation, in the Nenana coal field, north of the Ålaska Range.

PETROLEUM

For many years a small but constant supply of petroleum has been furnished by wells in the Katalla field, east of the mouth of the Copper River. Late in 1933 the refinery was burned and was not rebuilt, so that production was discontinued. In the past the products of the company, gasoline and distillate, which are of especially high quality, found a ready market near at hand, especially for use by the fishing fleet near Cordova. In none of the other prospective oil fields of the Territory was drilling for oil in progress in 1934. Considerable quantities of petroleum products are imported into Alaska from the States.

MISCELLANEOUS MINERAL PRODUCTS

Many other minerals, including such metals as antimony, arsenic, bismuth, chrominum, iron, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, tungsten, and zinc, and such nonmetallic minerals as asbestos, barite, clay, garnet, graphite, gypsum, jade, limestone, marble, mica, stone, and sulphur, have from time to time been exploited in Alaska. The Geological Survey does not have records that any considerable amounts of any of these mineral products were produced or sold in 1934.

MINERAL INVESTIGATIONS

The work of the Geological Survey in Alaska is directed primarily toward aiding in the development of the mineral resources of the country by determining the distribution and extent of those resources and disseminating all pertinent information about them that will be of service to the miner, prospector, or business man who might utilize that information. This has called for the carrying on of field investigations throughout the Territory, in the course of which all the known productive camps have been examined and nearly 300,000 square miles, or about half of the area of the entire country, has been mapped geologically and topographically.

In furtherance of these objects the Alaskan branch of the Geological Survey had seven field projects in progress during the open season of 1934 in various parts of the Territory. Considerable assistance in the financing of these projects was afforded by grants of funds by the Public Works Administration.

Five of these field projects were concerned primarily with geologic investigations and two with topographic mapping. The projects involving new geologic field work were as follows: Areas adjacent to Ketchikan in southeastern Alaska; part of the Alaska Range, including the headwaters of the Copper River Valley and parts of the Tanana Valley; the Kaiyuh Mountains, which lie south and east of the Yukon in the region west of Ruby and east of Kaltag; the northern and eastern part of Kodiak Island, in southwestern Alaska; and the coal fields adjacent to Eska, in the Matanuska district. The Eska work was financed and carried out at the request of the Alaska Railroad. The topographic field projects include the mapping of an extensive tract of Admiralty Island and adjacent parts of the Juneau listrict and mapping of parts of the Alaska Range at the head of the Copper River, especially in the vicinity of Mentasta Pass and Suslota Lake. In addition, the usual annual canvass of mineral producers was made and close contact kept with the recent mining developments. The compilation of planimetric maps from the airplane pictures taken by a detachment of the Navy Department some years before was continued at a temporary office, maintained at Juneau by the Geological Survey.

For the field season of 1935 seven projects were under way as early in the season as practicable and will be continued in the fall as late as field conditions permit, and the notes and observations thus collected will be subjected to office and laboratory study during the winter and the results prepared for publication. The field projects that were started and will be in progress throughout the fiscal year 1935-36, include 4 geologic investigations and 2 topographic mapping projects besides the usual mineral production canvass, further compilation of planimetric base maps, and other miscellaneous work. Geologic field projects will be carried on in parts of the Alaska Range region north of Slana; the central and southern part of Kodiak Island; and the Tikchik Lakes district; and a general study will be made of the permanently frozen ground in central and western Alaska, especially in the Fairbanks and Nome districts. The two topographic projects include continuation of mapping in the Admiralty Island area of southeastern Alaska and in the Alaska Range region, especially in the Tok Valley and adjacent parts of the Tanana region, south of Tanana Crossing.