Alaska Gold Rush History and Genealogy

The Willow Creek district is the area drairn eastern tributaries of the Susitna River below Sunshine, by n em tributaries of Cook Inlet and Knik Arm east of the Susitna River and by the Matanuska River.

Most of the placer gold from the district was recovered streams that drain areas containing once-productive lode mines. Considerably more than half of the placer gold probably came from operations on Grubstake Gulch and the part of Willow Creek immediately below the mouth of Grubstake Gulch (29) where claims were staked as early as 1897 and mining was still in progress in 1969. The gold in the gulch was derived from a ferous quartz veins in mica schist, one of which was worked successfully at the Thorpe lode mine, near the head of a fork of Grubstake Gulch (Berg and Cobb, 1967, p. 31, 34). In other streams in the same general area, placer gold derived from veins in a dioritic batholith was found but not mined. Jasper (1967a) in the course of a geochemical reconnaissance, collected mineral concentrates from this part of the Willow Creek district identified scheelite and chalcopyrite in several samples. On Alfred Creek (36), workable gold placers were discovered in 1911 and mined sporadically on a small scale for many years. A little platinum accompanies the gold. Minor producti of gold was reported from upper Mazuma Creek (35), a nearby stream that drains an area underlain only by volcanic rocks and Tertiary conglomerate. According to Martin and Mertie (1914, p. 279—280) and Grantz (1956), the gold in the area must have been reconcentrated from the conglomerate, which originaly covered a much greater area than the remnants preserved. Mendenhall (1900, p 321-322) noted that gold had been found on several south-flowing tributaries of the Matanuska River, but later reports did not describe successful mining on any of them.