Yentna-Cache Creek Mining District
Gold was discovered in the Yentna Cache-Creek Mining District in the US state of Alaska (also known separately as the Yentna District or Cache Creek District) of the upper Susitna Valley in 1898, soon followed by claim staking. Placer mining was reported in the Cache Creek drainage of the Dutch Hills by 1906. Quaternary glaciofluvial deposits, alluvial deposits, and Tertiary conglomeratic white quartz-breccia units have been mined in the Dutch Hills. About 200,000 ounces (6.2 tonnes) of gold has been produced from these placer deposits.
By 1927, a road from Talkeetna was constructed into the mining area, known today as The Petersville Road. The abandoned mining camp of Petersville, Alaska served as the area Post Office for several years in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Two areas have been set aside for recreational gold mining, the North and South units of the Petersville State Recreation Mining Areas. Many smaller one-man and family placer mining operations continue today.
In addition to placer gold mining, the district has had some mining of tungsten from scheelite deposits, and small-scale lode mining for gold.
The district is well known due to the influence of artist Sydney Laurence and the still-unsolved murders of four miners in 1939 which gained nation-wide attention (see The Mystery of the Cache Creek Murders by Roberta Sheldon).
A steam-powered dragline was used to mine the placer deposits of Peters Creek, below the canyon that cuts through the Peters Hills. The tailings of that operation can be seen today, and the area is part of the Petersville State Recreation Mining Area.
A cluster of deposits is in the main part of the Yentna district, near the Dutch Hills. The productive deposits here have been placer gold deposits with byproduct platinum and locally abundant cassiterite. Gold-bearing lodes in the Yentna district, which have not been as well described, include small and locally very rich deposits associated with felsic dikes and apparently low-grade deposits in major shear and altered zones. Assays exceeding 1 ounce of gold per ton have been obtained from three of these areas, and selected quartz-arsenopyrite vein material from one prospect assayed about 200 ounces of gold per ton.
Read more about Yentna-Cache Creek Mining District: Cache Creek Mine, The Blue Ribbon Mine
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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