Burdette Creek flows south from Sentinel Mountain into Slate Creek which joins the O'Donnel River. The creek is about eight kilometres long and the placer gold occurrence is near its southern end, about 28 kilometres southeast of the community of Atlin.

The creek flows over primarily massive grey limestone of the upper Mississippian to Permian Horsefeed Formation and lesser chert and argillite of the Mississippian to Triassic Kedahda Formation, both of the Cache Creek Complex. There are also exposures of the upper Mississippian to Permian Nakina Formation (Cache Creek Complex) at the headwaters of the creek around Sentinel Mountain composed of mafic volcanic rocks (greenstone).

The placer gold was discovered in 1912 but work was limited by the next summer. The creek received very sporadic prospecting work until 1921 when it was abandoned altogether. From 1916 to 1920, 156 grams of gold were recorded as recovered from Burdette Creek (Bulletin 28).

In 2016-17, an estimated 2.2 cubic metres of gravels were hand dug from channel banks on lower Burdette Creek and sieved, producing a total 8.3 grams gold. In 2018, C. Aspinall tested the lower end of Burdette Creek for placer gold with the intention of making the placer claims a focus for a future venture tourism business. An estimated 2.85 cubic metres of gravel were hand dug and sluiced producing 12 grams gold. During 2019, C. Aspinall spent 48 man-hours surveying, testing, placer mining, sluicing and panning an estimated total of 0.9 cubic metre on Burdette Creek to recover an estimated 3 grams of gold. The purpose was to provide venture tourists the experience of manual placer mining as was carried out during the historical Atlin Gold Rush.