Technical Report for the Fort Knox Mine - Kinross Gold

Fort Knox Mine Technical Report6.0 HISTORYThe Fort Knox area was actively explored for gold placer deposits since 1902 when FelixPedro discovered gold in Fish Creek located downstream of the Fort Knox deposit.Since that initial discovery, the surrounding Fairbanks Mining district has produced inexcess of 8 million ounces of gold, predominantly from placer deposits. Placer miningoperations continue to this day.Exploration for lode gold deposits was very limited during the early history of the regionand focused on tracing the source of the placer deposits up headwaters and tributariesto Fish Creek. Alfred Brooks mapped the area while working for the United StatesGeological Survey (USGS) in the early 1900’s. Brooks’ mapping described a largegranitic intrusive within the project area. In the 1968 Final Report for Mineral Resourcesof Northern Alaska, L.A. Heiner and E.N. Wolff noted that the great amount of placergold in the Fairbanks District led many workers to conclude that only the roots of thegold veins were left and that there was not enough economic incentive to test the theoryby exploration.In 1913, H. A. Currier staked lode-mining claims covering auriferous quartz veins on theMelba Creek-Monte Cristo Creek divide (covering part of what is now the Fort Knox golddeposit). A three-stamp mill was constructed on the property, but there is little evidenceof any production from the claims. USGS geologists who examined the prospect notedthe association of bismuthinite and gold in quartz veins and suggested a relationshipbetween the observed mineralization and the large granitic intrusive located nearby.The claims were dormant until 1980 when two local prospectors, Joe Taylor and GeorgeJohnson staked 19 state mining claims to work placer deposits. Taylor and Johnsonworked the placers of Monte Cristo Creek from 1980 – 1982 and recovered bismuthinitenuggets containing abundant gold. The demonstrated correlation between the gold andbismuth led Taylor and Johnson to prospect the slopes and divide between Melba andMonte Cristo Creeks. The prospecting operations involved panning and trenching, which22