70 FAIRBANKS AND RAMPART QUADRANGLES. 
bed rock ; another small area is said to have given $4 per square yard, 
and nuggets of values up to $00 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 Susie 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 proposi- 
tion 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 probably 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, to a point within about 
3 miles of the Yukon. 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 ex- 
treme 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 re- 
markably 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 also many very large quartzite 
bowlders. They are exposed on the sides of the valleys of the differ- 
