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DISTRICTS

Homer

Hope

Seward

The Kenai Peninsula region (p1. 1, fig. 10) is the Kenai Peninsula south of Turnagain Arm and west of the divide between Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound. It comprises the Homer, Hope, and Seward districts.
West of a line extending from the head of Kachemak Bay to Turnagain Arm near the mouth of the Chickaloon River, most of this region is considerably less than 1,000 feet above sea level, though rolling hills and a few steep—sided ridges rise to elevations of nearly 3,000 feet. The Kenai Mountains to the east are char¬acterized by high relief, and many of the summits are between 4,000 and 6,000 feet in altitude. Deep fords, many with glaciers at their heads, embay the coastline. Remnants of Pleistocene ice that covered the entire peninsula and extended far into the sea are preserved as alpine glaciers and as the Harding and Sargent Icefields. Proglacial lakes occupied much of the lowland during parts of Pleistocene time. Two large lakes in the lowlands, Skilak and Tustuména, lie behind recessional moraines, although the Kasilof River, which drains Tustumena Lake, has cut down to bedrock. The drainage of the northern part of the lowland is still not fully integrated. The entire region is free of permafrost.
The Kenai Mountains, the highest parts of which are virtually unexplored, are made up of limestone, chert, and tuff of Triassic age that rest on metamorphosed older volcanic and clastic rock~ and are overlain by Jurassic volcanics and a thick sequence ol intensely deformed, but only slightly metamorphosed, slate and graywacke, mainly of Late Cretaceous age (Kelly, 1963, p. 280-284; Berg and Cobb, 1967, p. 76). These rocks were intruded by Tertiary (?) dikes, sills, and stocks that range in composition from granite to peridotite (Berg and Cobb, 1967, p. 76; Richter, 1970 p. B4—B5). The lowland and adjacent parts of Cook Inlet are underlain by many thousands of feet of poorly consolidated mainly continental, rocks of Tertiary age that rest on a basement of rocks similar to those exposed in the Kenai Mountains (Mac. Neil and others, 1961; Kelly, 1963). The Tertiary rocks are buried by Quaternary deposits except along sea cliffs around the southern part of the Kenai Lowland, in isolated inland exposures, anc in a few small remnants resting on older rocks on the southeast shore of Kachemak Bay and at Port Graham.
Only gold, alloyed with silver, and chromite have been mined I from lodes in the Kenai Peninsula region, although copper, lead zinc, molybdenum, antimony, and nickel minerals have been found (Berg and Cobb, 1967, p. 73—82, fig. 14; Richter, 1970). The chromite is in two dunite and pyroxenite stocks in the southern part of the Homer district. Quartz veins, in graywacke and slat and in small quartz diorite stocks and granite dikes carry gold and various sulfide minerals. The lode gold production of the region probably was about 19,000 ounces.
Placer gold was first discovered in Alaska on the Kenai Rivet in 1848 (between bc. 5 and 7, fig. 10) by P. P. Doroshin, a mining engineer employeed by the Russian-American Co. In 1850—51 he attempted to mine gold on a stream that flows into Skilak Lake and on two small tributaries of the Kenai River between Skilak and Kenai Lakes but failed to find enough to repay his effort (Moffit, 1906a, p. 8). Later placer mining was concentrated the parts of the Hope district where lode deposits were extensively explored and mined. A few streams and beaches in other parts of the Kenai Peninsula region were worked on a small sea. In the area around Nuka Bay, however, where there are many gold-bearing lodes, placer gold has not been found. As production statistics have generally included the output of Crow Creek at neighboring streams in the Anchorage district in that credited to the Kenai Peninsula region, accurate figures are not available The total for the Kenai Peninsula from about 1895, the first yet production was officially reported, through 1960 was probably between 100 and 105 thousand fine ounces of gold and an unknown amount of alloyed silver. Small-scale placer operations were reported in 1961 and 1962.