Fairbanks Mining District - Ft. Knox Mine (operating)

Ft. Knox Mine (operating)

Today, the second largest gold producer in Alaska is the Fort Knox Gold Mine, an open-pit mine 26 miles 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 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 of gold resource estimated. In 2006 gold reserves equaled 2.7 million ounces with additional resources of 1.6 million ounces 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 (10.3 tonnes) 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 northeast of Fairbanks, on the northwest flank of Pedro Dome and approximately 11 miles from the Ft. Knox Mine. Both True North and Ft. Knox are owned by Fairbanks Gold Mining Incorporated, a subsidiary of Kinross Gold Corporation.