A company is drilling near Cantwell for the source of half a million ounces of gold

Avidian Gold wants to drill 30 exploration holes near Cantwell, in a district that has given up more than half a million ounces of gold over a century, without anyone finding where most of it came from. The state is taking public comment on the plan through Aug. 18.

The Golden Zone project sits in the Valdez Creek Mining District, one of Alaska's historic gold grounds. Its creeks were placer-mined for decades, meaning miners recovered gold that had eroded out of some source rock upstream and washed into the gravel. The district produced more than 500,000 ounces that way, but as of 2023 the source lode, the deposit all that loose gold eroded from, had never been found.

That is what hardrock drilling like Avidian's is chasing: the rock the placer gold came out of. The company's earlier work at Golden Zone found five stacked, gold-bearing zones and reported an indicated resource of about 267,400 ounces. The proposed drilling would run through the end of 2028.

The application isn't a brand-new venture. A predecessor company drilled nearly 20,000 feet at the site in 2017 and followed it with more holes and trenching in 2018 and 2019. Alaska News reported this year on a cluster of gold-exploration filings across the same district, of which the Golden Zone was the largest.

The proposal would also allow cross-country travel on state land outside the drilling sites, which is one of the things residents near the area have a stake in, along with local traffic, access and noise. Alaska Native communities around Cantwell and Valdez Creek have raised concerns elsewhere that changes in land use or water quality can affect subsistence and traditional use areas. The state notice includes no comment from area residents.