Wattamuse Creek is a northwest tributary to Slate Creek (GO020), a north tributary to Goodnews River. It has been placer mined from its junction with Slate Creek for a distance of about 2 miles. The coordinates are at the approximate midpoint of the workings, in the NE1/4 of section 9, T. 10 S., R. 71 W., of the Seward Meridian.

Wattamuse Creek is the principal gold producer in the Goodnews River drainage. Gold was discovered in 1917 by a native reindeer herder (Harrington, 1921), and the first mining took place in the fall of 1917, when about 500 ounces were produced. There has been extensive mining along Wattamuse Creek for at least two miles above the mouth of Slate Creek (Fechner, 1988; Calista Corp., 2008). Much of the mining until the early 30s was by various hand and small-scale mechanized mining when the New York-Alaska Company drilled the property. It was subsequently leased and a 2 1/2- foot dredge was built in 1938. The dredge operated until 1941 and mined from near the mouth of Cascade Creek downstream for about 1.4 miles to Slate Creek. In 1946 and 1947, Bristol Bay Mining Company used a dragline to mine in the narrow canyon above the mouth of Cascade Creek on claims 2 Above and 5-8 Above.

The pay streak on Wattamuse Creek was 20 to 30 feet wide in upper parts of the creek to over 100 feet wide on lower parts. The pay, 1 to 2 feet of gravel and about 6 inches of bedrock, ranged in grade from 0.015 to 0.15 ounce of gold per cubic yard. The overburden was 2 to 5 feet of soil and gravel (Harrington, 1921). The gravel became coarser upstream, where boulders up to a few feet across became more abundant. The gold recovery in the dredge was about four times that indicated by the drilling due to the large boulders in the creek.

Fechner (1988) collected eight 0.1 cubic yard placer samples in the Wattamuse Creek drainage, including one from lower Wattamuse below the mouth of Cascade Creek. These samples, from along the active drainage and from benches, contained 0.0013 to 0.7583 ounce of gold per cubic yard. Fechner (1988) indicates that the tailings along the creek could be reworked and that local unmined areas are also present. One unmined area is estimated to contain 60,000 cubic yards with an average grade of 0.015 to 0.018 ounce of gold per cubic yard. The lower dredged part of the creek (included with Cascade Creek by Fechner, 1988) is estimated to have had about 800,000 cubic yards of tailings. In as much as the dredge is reported to have recovered about 0.025 ounce of gold per cubic yard (Fechner, 1988), about 20,000 ounces of gold production are indicated for this part of the creek. However, the recorded production for this creek segment is 9,300 ounces of gold (Fechner, 1988). The upper part of the creek has recorded and estimated production of 18,300 ounces of gold (Fechner, 1988), possibly making total production from the creek as much as 38,000 ounces.