188

WILLOW AND JOHNSEN CREEKS

“Coal outcrops were observed at several localities in the Willow
Creek! area. The overburden there is too thick to permit tracing seams
for any distance, and in most instances insufficient data are available to
determine the stratigraphic position of the seams. On a westerly branch
of Johnsen! Creek, a coal outcrop more than 7 feet thick occurs near the
top of the Gething formation. Several 2- to 3-foot seams outcrop on
Willow Creek, above the first falls, near the base of the Gething. South
of Pine River a 3-foot seam and a 5-foot seam occur in the upper part of
the formation, but their exact stratigraphic position could not be deter-
mined.

“Prospecting for coal in this area should be confined mainly to a re-
latively narrow belt near the contact between the Gething and Moosebar
formations. This is the stratigraphic horizon in which the thickest coal
seam is known to occur on Hasler and Johnsen Creeks. The most ac-
cessible region for prospecting and development is east of Willow Creek
on the south side of Pine River and just west of Crassier Creek on the
north side of the river.”

HALFWAY-SIKANNI CHIEF RIVER COAL AREA

Coal-bearing strata of the Bullhead group are exposed by a major
anticlinal fold on Sikanni Chief River, Pink Mountain, and Halfway River
from 8 to 10 miles west of the Alaska Highway (west and northwest of
mile 150). This structure has been named the Pink Mountain anticline
by Hage (1944). It has a length of about 17 miles between Sikanni and
Halfway Rivers, but as the topographic expression of the fold continues
south of Halfway River almost to Cypress Creek, the total length of the
anticline may approach 30 miles.

A section of the Bullhead group exposed about a mile above the
waterfalls north of Pink Mountain has a thickness, calculated by Hage
(1944), of 900 feet, but as the strata are broken by an east-dipping fault
of undetermined displacement, the true thickness is not apparent. Another
section exposed 9 miles farther west has a calculated thickness of 1,620 feet.
As the Bullhead group in the Peace River district is more than 5,900 feet
thick, there is evidently a marked thinning of the strata in a northerly
direction.

Little prospecting has yet been done in this area, so that the economic
possibilities of its coal measures are unknown. The following notes on
the known occurrences are from C. O. Hage’s 1944 report.

“On Sikanni Chief River the Bullhead group contains at least ten
coal seams, none of which is more than a foot thick. The seams are more
common to the upper part of the group, which in this respect is similar to
the Gething formation of the Peace River area. The coal is good grade
bituminous, but the seams where observed are too thin to be worth mining.

“At the base of the Bullhead group on Pink Mountain, immediately
north of Halfway River and close to the crest of the anticline, is a seam of

1 Willow Creek flows northwest to enter Pine River near the mouth of Crassier Creek. Johnsen
creek Coe 0 be confused with Johnson Creck south of Peace River Canyon) is the west branch of
asler Creek.