The Manson River placer occurrence is located on an old placer site along the Manson River (near the old settlement site of Manson Creek). This occurrence covers the section of the Manson River that stretches from the informally named Kildare Creek (MINFILE 093N 057) and continues downstream to approximately 1 kilometre above the Manson Lakes. The underlying bedrock along this section of the river includes rock types that belong to the Cassiar, Slide Mountain and Quesnel terranes. The variance of bedrock is due to the Manson fault zone, which is associated with all the placer occurrences in the area between Germansen Landing and Manson Creek. The rock types found along this structure are ultramafics, listwanitic rocks, slates, argillites, sandstones and quartz wackes.

Placer gold was first discovered on the Manson River in 1871 and gave rise to the Manson Creek placer gold camp. Placer mining along this drainage system has occurred continuously since that time. The bedrock is covered by glacial material, which is in turn covered by postglacial gravels. The auriferous gravels are those that lie directly on the bedrock and the postglacial gravels. The majority of the interest has been the surrounding bedrock benches above the present level of the river. Past mining methods included hydraulics, underground, dredging, shovel and dragline and sluicing. Operations during the late 1980s were moderate to small and only operated during the summer months. Gold found by these operations has ranged from fine to coarse in size and semi-round to flat in shape. Jim Thomas ran a placer operation in 2002.

Placer gold production from the Manson River as recorded by Holland (1950; Bulletin 28) is mainly for the periods between 1874 and 1910, and between 1931 and 1945. The total amount of gold recovered is reported to be 358 032 grams.

In 2006, Spanish Mountain Gold Ltd conducted a comprehensive soil and silt sampling program on the MC property within the Manson Creek area covering approximately 54 000 hectares. In total, 962 soil samples, 52 silt samples and 52 heavy mineral samples were collected. Heavy mineral sample 791H022, located approximately 500 metres east of the Manson River occurrence, assayed 40.2 grams per tonne gold (Assessment Report 29274).

In 2017, Angel Jade Mines Ltd. carried out a field program with the intention of locating hard-rock sources of placer gold, and to determine if gold and base metal anomalies within the listwanite exposures could be used as a vector to high-grade mineralization. The field program focused on three regions within the Manson Creek area, the Big Bend area near the southern extent of the claim group, the Gary’s Pit area within the eastern extent of the claim group and the Blackjack Creek area within the northern extent of the claim group. Between the three regions, a total of 62 rock samples were collected and assayed. The assays returned no values of economic interest and it was suggested that future exploration would benefit from structural mapping in locating the quartz-vein–hosted coarse gold.