46 
FAIRBANKS AND RAMPART QUADRANGLES. 
gold belt. Some extensive prospectin 
<r was 
done on this stream 
with a churn drill during the winter of 1907 but the results are not 
available for publication. 
All these creeks are readily accessible from the Tanana Valley 
Railway. A good road leads up Esther Creek and several feeders 
have been built. 
SMALL WOOD CREEK. 
Smallwood Creek, a westerly tributary of the Little Chena, is 
about 9 miles in length. The floor of its valley where work is in 
progress is about half a mile wide, and from this floor the valley 
walls rise with gentle slope to the bounding ridges, which stand at 
1,000 to 1,600 feet above the sea. Smallwood Creek has not been 
gaged, but appears to carry a large amount of water. The gradient 
of the creek is low, probably not over GO feet to the mile in the 
upper half of its course and somewhat less in the lower half. There 
is little clue to the character of the bed rock except the constitution 
of the gravels. It is known, however, that the ridge lying northwest 
of Smallwood Creek is made up largely of granite and that granite 
forms the bed rock of much of Nugget Creek, a westerly tributary of 
Smallwood. To judge from the alluvium, mica schist" is probably 
the country rock of much the larger part of this basin. Among other 
rocks noted in the gravels is a fine-grained rock carrying porphyritic 
crystals of feldspar. 
Comparatively little prospecting has been done on Smallwood 
Creek, and it is therefore possible to make but few statements as 
regards the character and depth of the alluvium. It appears that 
the bed-rock floor has in general about the same slope as the present 
stream valley, but locally some irregularities occur. The depths to 
bed rock as reported by miners are as follows: 
Depth to bed rock ami condition of ground along Smallwood ('reck. 
< llaim number. 
Depth 
to bed 
rock. 
Condition of ground. 
Feet. 
50 
50 
108 
130 
135 
145 
317 
2 ;ibove__ _ _ _ _ 
Ground frozen. 
3 below _-_____-__--_ 
Do. 
4 beloAV _ _ 
7 below 
45 feet of muck; ground frozen. 
17 below ._ ___ 
60-100 (?) feet of muck; ground frozen. 
This table indicates that there is a body of gravel ranging in thick- 
ness from 40 feet near the head of the creek to 200 feet 5 miles 
below. As the creek valley is from 100 yards to half a mile or more 
" This description, by Alfred H. Brooks, is based on one day's examination of the upper- 
part of the creek and on compiled information. 
