Greens Creek mine
| Admiralty mining district | |
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| Alaska Mining District | |
 Admiralty mining district
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| Coordinates: 58°20′N 134°40′W / 58.333°N 134.667°WCoordinates: 58°20′N 134°40′W / 58.333°N 134.667°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Alaska |
The Admiralty mining district is a mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska which consists of Admiralty Island. Most of the gold recovered from the Admiralty district is a by-product of silver and base metal mining.
The Alaska Empire underground lode mine recovered gold from quartz veins in metamorphic rocks. Discovered and staked in the 1920s, production of about 20,000 tonnes of 0.25 ounce-per-ton gold ore occurred in the mid-1930s. The Funter Bay underground lode mine produced about 500 thousand tonnes of copper-nickel-cobalt ore, without gold, from a Mesozoic gabbro-norite pipe. No significant placer mining was done on Admiralty. About 500,000 ounces of gold, almost all from Greens Creek, have been recovered from the Admiralty district.
The Greens Creek mine in the Admiralty mining district is the 5th largest silver producer in the world; gold is a byproduct. The mine is an underground operation, with surface disposal of tailings onto two 29-acre (120,000 m2) sites. The mine and mill site lie on 18 patented claims; the mine has mineral rights to 12 square miles (7500 acres) of surrounding land owned by the Federal government. It is located approximately 25 km south of Juneau, Alaska, on Admiralty Island within the Admiralty Island National Monument. The mine produces ores of silver and gold, and concentrates of zinc and lead, from a structurally and mineralogically complex VMS deposit. Geologists discovered mineralized outcrops in 1975, exploration drilling began in 1978; full-scale development was initiated in 1987 and production of metal concentrate began in 1989. Production was halted, due to low metal prices, for a few years in the mid-'90s. Concentrates are trucked nine miles (14 km) from the mine/mill complex to a port site on Hawk Inlet; from there they are shipped anywhere worldwide for smelting and refining.
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