Vindicator Mine, Popof Island

Vindicator Mine, Popof Island

by | Mar 22, 2024

Vindicator is a historical beach placer mine in the Alaska Peninsula Mining District situated on the western shore of Popof Island between Sand Point to the north and Red Cove to the south, about 260 miles (419 km) northeast of Dutch Harbor and 67 miles (108 km) southwest of Perryville, Alaska. Popof Island is one of the Shumagin Islands, a group of 20 islands and numerous islets and reefs off the southern coast of the Alaska Peninsula. The largest islands in the group are Unga, Korovin, Nagai and Popof.  Popof Island is about 9 miles (14.5 km) long and 6 miles (10 km) wide and adjacent to and separated from Unga Island by Popof Strait. Popof is a Russian proper name, often written Popov or Popoff. The island was originally named Popovskoi by Captain Mikhail Tebenkov, and shown as Popof Island on U.S. Bureau of Fisheries charts in 1890.

The geology of the Alaska Peninsula region consists of two main orogenies that extend for most of its length. The northwestern belt is about 35 miles (56 km) wide near the Ugashik Lakes and consists predominantly of unconsolidated Quaternary silt, sand, and gravel. The southeastern belt, which includes the Shumagin Islands, is composed mainly of Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks that were intruded by granitic plutons. The volcanic rocks on Popof Island represent early Oligocene and late Eocene lava flows, lahar deposits, debris-flow deposits, ash-flow tuff, and tuff. Contact with igneous intrusions created ore-bearing mineralizations. Heavy minerals released by weathering processes are slowly washed down slope, becoming concentrated in stream and beach gravels. Minerals that form placer deposits have high specific gravity and are chemically resistant to weathering such as gold, silver, platinum, cassiterite, magnetite, chromite, ilmenite, rutile, native copper, zircon, monazite, and various gemstones. Placer gold was discovered on Popof Island by Louis Herman in the summer of 1904.

The Vindicator prospect is the only placer deposit in the Alaska Peninsula region for which there is a production record, although beach mining was reported on Unga Island in 1911, but did not identify where on the island or give any idea of the success of the venture. The Vindicator beach placer produced about 580 ounces (16.4 kg) of gold that was taken out with rockers in 1904 and 1905 from a belt about 0.75 miles (1.2 km) long. All the recovered gold was from below mid-tide level and most was found around large boulders near the low-tide line. From 20 to 40 men worked the beach and washed the gravel using rockers, and it was reported that about $12,000 gold was taken from the beach placers in 1904 and 1905. Little work was done on this beach after 1905; however, four lode claims were staked on the hills immediately adjoining the beach placers in 1908, and on these claims short prospecting tunnels, a few shallow shafts, and one surface crosscut were opened. Read more here and here. Explore more of Vindicator and Popof Island here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2022 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

Please report any errors here

error: Content is protected !!