History of the Mine
The Shirley Bar Mine is a bench placer with a 120-year history of well-documented "economic" gold production. It contains both fine and nugget gold distributed across a large percentage of the area on these claims but there are also some very hot spots. Recovery since 2009 has ranged from 0.016 ounces per yard to 0.25 oz per yd. In 2017, 1,550 ounces of gold were mined in less than 50% up time. Several nuggets over 5 ounces have been recovered and a previous owner found a 28 ounce nugget. Over 200,000 ounces have been mined from the Shirley Bar Mine since the late 1800s. The majority of the surface area is virgin and only a small amount of surface area has been mined to bedrock.

The area including the Shirley Bar was originally mined starting in 1901. Between 1901 and 1904, reports estimate that more than 1,000 miners panned on Glen Creek and Rhode Island Creek, mainly using simple, hand-mining methods. After 1904, mining was recorded in 1931, 1937 and 1938 and again in 1951 (Williams, 1951). Minor activity was recorded in the area after 1951, with workings in 1962, 1967 and 1968. Thurman Oil and Mining owned the property and mined from 1994 until 2000, when the property was sold to Goldstream Mining. Minimal mining activity took place from 2000-2009. Goldstream Mining sold the claims to the Dobson family, who owned the claims and worked them from 2009-2014. Northstar Mining purchased the claims from the Dobsons in 2016 and worked the property from 2016-2018.

Quasar Gold Corp acquired all of the mining leases to the Shirley Bar from Northstar Mining in 2019.

Geology of the Area
The following information was taken from professional articles and reports written over the past 120 years.

The “Shirley Bar” is believed to have been formed over a period of two million years. The property is a bench placer deposit between Glen Creek and Rhode Island Creek and became famous for sizable nuggets being found on the surface and within one foot to three feet of the surface. It is on a broad, gently sloping bedrock spur that is covered with modern alluvial deposits. The bedrock in the area is predominantly Cretaceous sandstone, shale and siltstone (Chapman and others, 1982; Riefenstahl and others, 1998). There is little organic overburden on the virgin placers, usually not more than 1 to 2 feet, which overlies from 4 to 70 feet of cobbled, unsorted gravels. The sediment is a modern stream channel / alluvial deposit with some larger cobbles / conglomeratic boulders interbedded within unconsolidated, sub-angular to sub-rounded gravels.

A thrust-emplaced lenticular block of Triassic sedimentary rocks and Jurassic or Cretaceous quartzite are mapped to the north and west. The two main fault blocks contained within the property are separated by a thrust fault, striking generally, east-northeast. Estimated fault throw is between 50-60 feet down to the south-southeast. Evidence of this structural offset is indicated by a bedrock occurrence of 5 to 10 feet below the surface on the up-thrown side of the fault and up to 70 feet below the surface on the down-thrown side. The same gravel sediment is deposited on the down-thrown side of the fault, forming a downhill continuation of the Shirley Bar pay streak.

The gold is somewhat distributed throughout the gravels, and becomes inversely gradationally finer with depth. In some areas, gold is also concentrated on the surface of the bedrock on the up-thrown fault block.

Placer gold is found deposited within current / modern stream channels as well, with Rhode Island Creek, Gold Run Creek, Glen Creek and Seattle Creek all contained within or adjacent to the property. The streams indicate similar geologic conditions in general, and are indicative of a rich placer streak which was developed by stream concentration from the poorer bench placers. No intrusive rocks are immediately exposed in the area. However, quartz veining is present and in larger gold nuggets found on the property, white quartz was highly associated with the mineralization.

Collier (1903) reported that the pay was in the gravel above the bedrock, and is found within a clay-rich sedimentary layer that overlies the bedrock. Later reports state that the gold is distributed evenly throughout the 2 to 9-foot thickness of gravel in the bench (Prindle and Hess, 1905; Hess, 1908). Mertie (1934) described the deposit as a semi-residual body of auriferous, angular gravel and that the pay streak continues down the hillside as a body of sub-angular gravel on muck.

Collier (1903) described the gold as coarse and rough. An assay of the gold yielded a value of $16.45 an ounce (at $20.67 per ounce). Mertie (1934) reported a gold fineness of 792. The main commodities include gold and silver, but other heavy minerals within the placer include pyrite, cinnabar, picotite, barite, galena, ilmenite, limonite, garnet and sphene (Waters, 1934). Joesting (1942) reported that cinnabar was common.

‍Prospect Location and History
The "Shirley Bar" mineral estate is composed of 69 State of Alaska mining claims comprising approximately 2,300 acres and is owned by Quasar Gold Corp of Fort Collins, Colorado. The claims are located within the Rampart Mining District on the upper reaches of Rhode Island Creek, Gold Run and Glenn Creek and on the hillsides and ridges between these creeks.

The exact date of discovery is not known for certain, but from 1901 to 1902 the first prospectors and miners reportedly produced $150,000 or approximately 7,500 ounces of placer gold from Glenn Creek and that in some places “stringers” of gold found on bedrock would yield from $10 to $35 per pan. (Collier, 1903). This is equivalent to 0.5 to 1.75 ounces of gold per pan.

By 1933, placer gold production using mostly hand mining methods was over $1,000,000 dollars (greater than 50,000 ounces) from Glenn Creek and about 25,000 ounces from the creek and bench placers of Rhode Island Creek and Gold Run (Mertie, 1934). Production since then has not been well documented, however, due to the ongoing production after World War 2 to the present, it is estimated that in excess of 25,000 additional ounces of placer gold have been produced to the present using modern, mechanized methods.

2023 Placer Exploration Program
In 2023, Quasar Gold Corp contracted Metallogeny Inc. of Fairbanks, Alaska to conduct a reconnaissance placer exploration program on the claims using prospect pits and trenches. During July, 47 prospect pits were dug with an excavator to map stratigraphic sections and collect samples of placer material.

Test pits placed on the Johnson Block, downhill of the Break-Off fault indicate two potential placer resources. The West Resource Area is located to the west of the North Star Piton lower Rhode Island Creek and the East Resource Area is located to the east of another Northstar Pit, bounded by the “Break-Off” fault to the north (uphill) and the claim block boundary to the east. In both resource areas, a typical stratigraphic section is 1 to 2 feet of organic silt overlying 0 to 3 feet of barren silt, sand, and gravel, overlying 5 to15 feet of gold-bearing gravel resting on either weathered, slaty bedrock or deeper, lower-grade gravel.

Based on the results for the West and East resource areas, it is estimated that sufficient mineralized material may have been located at both sites to warrant evaluation for production of gold.

Future Exploration‍
The mineralized material found in the Western Resource Area is open to the south and southwest. Additionally, there is a large area along the southern fringe of the claims extending from Rhode Island Creek (West Resource Area) to the eastern claim boundary that is unmined and unexplored . Further exploration is needed to expand the placer resource here.

The very rough character of the gold particles and the presence of quartz attached to some particles of gold suggests a local source for much of the placer gold recovered in earlier mining operations (greater than 100,000 ounces). The Break-Off Fault and bedrock underlying Shirley Bar and the hills and ridges to the north are attractive locations to explore for mineralized structures, veins and rock units that may be gold-bearing.