30 GOLD PLACERS OF RAMPART REGION. 
with the limited means of the ordinary prospector have found it more advantageous 
to work the smaller streams. The total production to 1904 is placed by miners of 
the region at $9,900. The gold produced is said to have been taken from the central 
portion of the valley, partly from bar diggings and partly by drifting, but in general 
the gravels do not seem to be rich enough for working by pick and shovel methods. 
Nothing was learned of the occurrence of gold in the gravels of Minook Creek 
above the mouth of Slate Creek, except that colors have been found throughout its 
length. Below the mouth of Ruby Creek colors of gold are said to have been found 
in the gravels of a bench on the west side of Minook Creek, a few feet above the 
present stream, but not in paying quantity. The debris here is largely a graphitic 
slate somewhat schistose and highly impregnated with pyrites. An assays of some 
of the material gave a trace of silver. 
Two small areas worked in the gravels between Ruby and Slate Creeks are said to 
have given values of about $3 per square yard of bed rock ; another small area is 
said to have given $4 per square yard, and nuggets of values up to $90 are 
reported to have been found. The gold is stated to be practically all upon bed rock. 
The width of the gravel in which gold is found is not known, but it is supposed to 
occur throughout the gravels which floor the valley for a width of half a mile. 
A company has been formed to hydraulic this portion of the creek; considerable 
preliminary work has been done, some pipe, lumber, etc., were on the ground 
September 20, 1904, and a large amount of pipe and other supplies for the company 
were brought to Rampart by the steamer Susit on her last trip up the Yukon for the 
season. 
Several schemes were on foot for working the gravels in the lower part of the 
valley near the mouth of Hoosier Creek. One proposition was to work them with a 
dredger, and another with power scrapers. Little was learned of either plan, but 
from the roughness of the bed rock dredging would seem a difficult undertaking, 
except in the limited area in which the bed rock seems to be the Kenai sediments. 
HIGH BENCH. 
The high bench mentioned on the east side of Minook Creek, the most prominent 
feature of Minook Valley, needs to be treated here, as on its gravels depends proba- 
bly in large measure the richness of most of the placers of the Minook region. 
This bench, starting at a point about a mile above the mouth of Ruby Creek and 
about 9 miles in a straight line above the mouth of Minook Creek, continues to 
Hunter Creek within about 3 miles of the Yukon (PI. IV, A). The eastern line 
bounding the bench runs about N. 60° E., so that between Hunter Creek and Little 
Minook Creek the bench has a width of between 2\ and 3 miles. At its extreme 
eastern side the bench has a height of about 800 feet above Minook Creek, and it 
slopes toward the west until the height above the stream is only about 500 feet. The 
surface of the bench is remarkably smooth and continuous between the various 
streams that have cut across it, and resembles a plain through which deep ditches 
have been cut. It seems to narrow somewhat and crosses Hunter Creek at the 
mouth of ' ' 47 Pup ' ' continuing in a northeast direction toward the Yukon. Although 
the writer was unable to follow the bench farther than Hunter Creek, miners 
assured him that they were able to trace it beyond in a northeast direction by 
gravels on the surface. 
The gravels contain chert, diabasic and metamorphic rocks, vein quartz, and some 
other pebbles with many heavy quartzite bowlders ( PI. IV, B). They are exposed 
on the sides of the valleys of the different creeks cutting the bench and have rolled 
down into the present stream beds where the great number of large quartzite bowl- 
ders make considerable trouble for the miner. 
a Burl in game, E. E., & Co., Denver, Colo. 
