USA > Alaska > Alaska: its history and resources, gold fields, routes and scenery > Part 5
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About three-fourths of a mile below Forty Mile post, is a new and enterprising town named after Cudahy, so well known through- out the country as the packer of meats, and who is a member of the North American Transportation and Trading Company, bet- ter known in the Yukon valley as "Captain Healy's Company." This post was established in the summer of 1892. In size, population, and general business activity, and in the volume of business done, it is a duplicate of its neighbor. Captain Healy has established a number of posts on the river not heretofore covered by the Alaska Commercial Company. It is safe to say that these two concerns will control, for a long time, the major portion of the traffic of this country. Captain Healy is one of the best known pioneers of Alaska, having established and done a large business for a number of years, principally with the natives at the head of the Chilkoot arm of Lynn canal, where he established the trading post known as Ty-a. The able assistant in the management of Fort Cudahy, Mr. Charles Hamilton, went into this far off coun- try fresh from one of the government departments at Washington. In the fall of 1892, the company's river boat was detained by ice at Nulato, a short distance above the mouth of the Yukon. It became necessary to communicate with the head office at Chicago,
YUKON MINERS PACKING OVER ROUTE. Winter & Pond, Photo, Juneau, Alaska,
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ROUTE TO THE YUKON RIVER.
and Mr. Hamilton undertook to make the trip the whole length of this river with dogs; in about four months he succeeded in reaching the coast at the head of Lynn canal. It was a most remarkable trip ; and he is the only man who is entitled to the credit of having,-as a newspaper saw fit to express it,-"split the continent squarely in two." The next spring he went over- land to Forty Mile, where he met the boat on its up trip, and the following winter, he again made the trip to the coast, traveling with a dog sledge all the way.
About one hundred and seventy miles from Forty Mile, to the west, the Yukon flats are encountered, and just within them is located a new mining camp called Circle City, which was founded in the fall of 1894. It is the distributing point for the vast regions surrounding Birch creek, which flows into the Yukon two hundred and twenty-five miles below. Circle City has been platted into streets, and a recording office for this mining district is located here. Six miles westward from Circle City a portage of six miles carries the traveler to Birch creek, nearly two hundred miles above its mouth.
The territory drained by the Yukon river in every direction, for three or four hundred miles in this region, is low country, called the Yukon flats. These flats, whose extent is not known, are supposed by miners and others to have at one time formed the bed of a vast lake.
The principal tributary of the Yukon, below Birch creek, is the Tanana river, probably eight hundred miles in length, and having a number of other streams of considerable size flowing into it. The Tanana drains the country stretching from the head of the river and the Yukon, to the White river on the south. This river has been very slightly explored, and little is known of it, or of the natives who inhabit its banks. They are, how- ever, reported by the few venturesome prospectors who have made their way into this section to be rather ill-disposed.
Nuklukyeto is located at the junction of the Tozikakat river with the Yukon, where the Alaska Commercial Company have a trading post which was established a number of years ago.
About five hundred and fifty miles below the Tanana the waters of the Koyukuk river joins the Yukon from the north. Below the Koyukuk river, the only streams of any importance that empty into the Yukon are the Innoko, coming in from the
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south, and the Anvik, about thirty miles further down, which enters from the north.
The only station at which the ocean steamers land having freight or passengers for the upper Yukon, is St. Michael's. This has been the principal trading post of the Alaska Commer- cial Company, and the outfitting post for their stations on the river, for the past twenty years. It is located about sixty miles to the north of the usual entrance to the Yukon, on what is known as St. Michael's island.
The question is often asked why a location for a town has not been made nearer the mouth of the river, and thus obviating the necessity of the river boats steaming out into the open waters of Bering sea to take on their freight. So far as is known, there is not a suitable location where the high water, on the breaking up of the ice in the river, does not overflow. The Yukon is very shallow at its mouths, eight feet being the greatest depth found. The ice passes out of the Yukon, and leaves it free for naviga- tion, about the middle of June, but it is not clear for an approach to St. Michael's until several days later. If a station could be located within easier access to the river, it would afford an opportunity to get to the headwaters earlier. St. Michael's is, strictly speaking, a native town. Aside from the buildings and store of the Alaska Commercial Company and the residences of its employes, a church building and the residence of its pas- tor, the houses and residences are those of the natives. Enor- mous supplies of goods are shipped here every year for the trading posts and missions on the river, and during the two months at the opening and closing of the season, it pre- sents an air of bustle and business activity rarely found at any of the frontier Alaska towns. The new company, known as the North American Transportation and Trading Company, are making arrangements to build warehouses and a trading post about a half mile south of the old town.
The Yukon river and its many tributaries, a number of which can be navigated by light draft steamers for several hundred miles, traverse an empire. The Yukon is navigable by four hundred-ton stern-wheel boats, drawing four feet of water, for a distance of eighteen hundred and fifty miles from its mouth, or to the mouth of Pelly river. It flows into Bering sea through several different mouths, that farthest north being nearly one hundred miles distant from its most southern artery. Its course
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YUKON MINERS AND NATIVES PACKING OVER ROUTE. Winter & Pond, Photo, Juneau, Alaska,
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ROUTE TO THE YUKON RIVER.
is westerly, but bends north to the Arctic circle when about mid- way across the territory. At the junction of the Pelly and Lewis rivers it has an average width of perhaps three-quarters of a mile until it reaches Fort Yukon, where it is about eight miles wide, and again narrows to from two to three miles at the mouth of the Koyukuk river, and maintains this width to Koserefski, from which point it again widens to eight or ten miles, and car- ries this width towards its mouth, then flows into Bering sea through a number of different channels.
The navigable tributaries of the Yukon for small, light-draft boats, may be grouped as follows: The Andreafski for fifty miles, Shagluk slough fifty miles, Innoko fifty iniles, Tanana three hundred miles, Klanarchargut twenty-five miles, Beaver creek one hundred miles, Birch creek one hundred and fifty miles, Koyukuk river three hundred miles, Porcupine one hundred miles, Stewart five hundred miles, Pelly fifty miles, and the McMillan two hundred miles.
While the Yukon is navigable for a distance of one thousand eight hundred and fifty miles with a four hundred ton vessel, a one hundred and fifty ton steamer with powerful machinery would be enabled to pass through Five Fingers and three hun- dred miles further through Hootalinqua river to the head of Tes- lin lake.
CHAPTER VII.
THE YUKON GOLD FIELDS.
GOLD was first discovered in paying quantities in the Yukon
basin in 1881. In that year a party of four miners crossed the range and descended the Lewis river as far as the Big Salmon river, which they ascended for a distance of two hundred miles. Gold was found on all of its bars, many of which paid well. In the next three or four years some mining was done on the Pelly and Hootalinqua rivers, and, in 1886, gold in considerable quan- tities was found at Cassiar bar on the Stewart river. The richest, by the way, so far located in the Yukon country, yielded as high as one hundred dollars per day to each nia11.
As early as 1860 men in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company are reported to have found gold in the Yukon basin. Professor Davidson credits George Holt as being the first white man to cross the coast range. A confusion exists as to the time of Holt's journey, the dates being variously given as 1872, 1874 and 1878.
Holt went down the chain of lakes to Lake Marsh or Mud lake, as it is sometimes called, and then followed an Indian trail to the Hootalinqua river, where, he reported upon his return, he had found coarse gold. No coarse gold, however, has since been found on that river, but the bars yield large quantities of flour gold. In 1880 Edward Bean led a party of twenty-five men from Sitka to the Hootalinqua river, but met with indifferent success. Other parties also crossed the pass during the same year.
The Yukon section may be divided into three divisions, namely, the upper lying entirely within British territory, and embracing the White, Stewart, Pelly, Lewis and Hootalinqua rivers, which together form the headwaters of the main Yukon; the middle division includes Fort Reliance and the country down to the mouth of the Tanana river; the lower division stretches from the mouth of the Tanana to Norton Sound and Bering sea.
YUKON MINERS AT STONE HOUSE.
Winter & Pond Photo, Juneau, Alaska.
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THE YUKON GOLD FIELDS.
It is in the middle division that the recent discoveries have been made; on Forty Mile, Sixty Mile, Miller, Glacier and Bircli creek, and Koyukuk river. Forty Mile and Sixty Mile creeks flow into the Yukon from the west, having their source in the Ratzel mountains, a low, intermediate range running nearly parallel to the Yukon, and forming the divide between the Yukon and Tanana rivers. The streams putting into the Tanana on the west side of this range have not yet been explored; but lower down, along the banks of the Tanana, gold in paying quantities has been found, and a few of the bars worked. Recent estimates of the gold output from the middle division alone, for the past year, are placed at $200,000; while from $25,000 to $50,000 has been inined in the upper and lower divisions.
Miller creek, one of the richest so far discovered in the inte- rior, is a tributary of Sixty Mile creek, entering it about seventy miles from its mouth. It is about seven miles long, and upwards of fifty mining claims have been located there, but few of them have, as yet, been developed to any considerable extent. Miners prospected this creek at various times for several years, each time abandoning it because the vast accumulations of drift found everywhere made it unprofitable to work. But, in 1892, pros- pecting again began, and many rich strikes were made. One claim alone yielding $37,000 of the yellow metal, and one clean- up of about eleven hundred ounces was reported. One hundred and twenty-five miners have located on this creek, many of whom own their own claims. The rate of wages liere established is ten dollars per day, which is the usual price paid in all the camps.
Glacier creek is another branch of Sixty Mile creek being separated from Miller creek about three miles, and runs nearly parallel with it. Claims located on this creek and prospected last season, promise to equal in richiness those of Miller creek, and rich finds have been reported here on claims abandoned by prospectors some time before. The whole creek has been located. The first claims were located the middle of last summer. The gulch is nine miles in length, and varies in width from a mile and one-half at its mouth to sixty feet at the head. The prospects on Glacier creek are even better than those of Miller creek, the dirt yielding from a few cents to four dollars to the pan. Mining Recorder Paddock, of Glacier creek, speaks as
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follows of a trip made in the dead of winter from Forty Mile post: "I started on January the third from Forty Mile for Miller creek, distant about sixty-five miles, and arrived February 27th. The cold was severe, the thermometer ranging from forty- two degrees to seventy-seven degrees below zero, compelling me to lie in camp for ten days. I drew a sled which carried my small outfit, and meeting many steep and difficult places on the route, across gulches and over ridges, I was compelled on several occasions to divide my load and take it in sections."
Another creek, distant about three miles from Miller creek, is named Bed Rock, but as yet has not proved very promising as a mining location.
Indian creek flows into the Yukon about thirty miles below Sixty Mile creek. Here rich gold discoveries were reported last year. The stream is rapid, but shallow, but prospectors have ascended it a distance of over one hundred miles.
Forty Mile creek is more familiarly known to the miners of Alaska, and perhaps to the people at large, than any other min- ing locality in the territory. Its bars have yielded large returns, but these diggings are practically abandoned for the gulches and ravines that furnish coarser gold. It is about two hundred miles long, and its tributaries are numerous. Entering the Yukon from the west, it drains the country lying between the Yukon and Tanana rivers. It was not discovered until 1887, and was the scene of the first real excitement in the valley of the Yukon. This stream enters that river from the west in about sixty-four de- grees north latitude and about one hundred and forty-one degrees west longitude. Its mouth is in Canadian territory. The first news of gold being found here was brought to the coast by a man named Tom Williams, who was the bearer of letters to "Jack " McQuestion, of the Alaska Commercial Company's trading post at the junction of Forty Mile creek with the Yukon, who was then in San Francisco, advising him of the discovery, and instructing him to ship in a larger supply of provisions in antici- pation of a rush to the new Eldorado the following spring. Wil- liams was accompanied by an Indian boy with a dog team and sled. They had an extremely rough trip up the river. It was in the dead of winter and the cold was intense. Before reaching Lake Bennett the dogs all died from cold and exhaustion. At the summit of Chilkoot pass a fearful storm arose, and the strug- gling travelers were compelled to hastily build a snow hut in
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YUKON MINERS AND NATIVES AT SUMMIT OF CHILKOOT PASS.
Winter & Pond Photo, Juneau, Alaska,
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THE YUKON GOLD FIELDS.
which they remained ten days, living on a little dry flour, the only thing left them in the way of provisions. Both men were badly frost-bitten, and upon attempting to resume the journey it was found that Williams was unable to travel. Nothing daunted, the young Indian took his companion on his back and, struggling through drifts and blinding snow, succeeded in reaching Ty-a, sixteen miles distant. A few days later Williams died, but not until he told Captain Healy of the strike at Forty Mile, and of his mail pouch containing his letters which was left at the snow hut at the summit, where it was afterward recovered.
In the following spring active mining operations began, and, it is estimated, that since that time upwards of half a million dol- lars in gold have been taken out of Forty Mile creek, and the small feeders running into it. On Forty Mile nearly all the available rich ground has been worked out, but there are many high bars along the stream known to be rich, which have not as yet been touched, because of the difficulty of getting water through them, and the frozen condition of the ground.
Birch creek, the scene of the latest strikes and excitement in the Yukon country, runs parallel with the Yukon on the west, for over three hundred miles, and as elsewhere related, has a remarkable feature of a portage only six miles across between this and the Yukon, two hundred miles above its confluence with that stream, so a trip by water by one terminal of the portage to the other involves a journey of four hundred miles. Here on the Yukon side of the gateway to the Birch creek mines, is Circle City, and at the close of the season last fall, fully three hundred miners were to be found in the different gulches, many of whom intended to spend the winter drifting, and opening up their claims.
Ned Ayleward, a Birch creek miner, in describing the gold discoveries there, says : "In coarse gold I got as high as thirteen dollars to the pan. The gold is like pumpkin seeds, but some pieces weigh from three to ten dollars, and I think I will make from forty to fifty dollars per day, when I have my claim opened up. In prospecting, I would get from fifteen to twenty dollars, under a little stone on bed rock. I did not leave Juneau broke, for in that case I would have had to rustle for a "grub stake," and in all probability would not have made this strike. I have seen no quartz claims here that amount to anything, but am on the look out for them."
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ALASKA.
Here are extensive auriferous deposits, and the creeks and bars adjacent to Birch creek have been more or less thoroughly prospected, with the result that this section bids fair to become a vigorous gold-producing rival of the famed Forty Mile district.
One of the principal tributaries to Birch creek is Crooked creek, and from Circle City a trail leads over the hills to the mines on Independence and Mastodon creeks.
On Molymute, a branch of Birch creek, gold was first dis- covered in 1893, and since that time it has been found on tribut- tary streams. Birch creek has been explored for upwards of three hundred and fifty miles, and the entire distance is filled with rapids and canyons. The South Fork drains the country lying at the head of Seventy Mile creek. Many claims were staked off last year at Mastodon, Independence, and other streams flowing into Birch creek. These claims are more easily worked than elsewhere on the Yukon and tributaries, from the fact that bedrock appears much nearer the surface, and water is more easily obtained. Some sixty miles below Birch creek portage Preacher creek joins the main stream. This creek is about one hundred and twenty miles long. It has been prospected but little, and not much is known of it, except that as everywhere else in the Yukon basin, gold is found. The headwaters of this creek penetrate a country whose geological formation is very peculiar, showing drift and disturbances which might have been caused by the receding of waters ages ago.
Three years ago some rich gold discoveries were made on the Koyukuk river which were prospected vigorously the following year with good results. A number of creeks, namely, North Fork, Wild creek, South Fork, and Fish creek, have also been pros- pected with fairly good success, but no extensive deposits have yet been found. Gold placer mining may be said to end here, as from this point to the mouth of the Yukon, little prospecting has been done. Below the Koyukuk river the only streams of any importance that empty into the Yukon, are the Innoko coming in from the south, and the Anvik from the north, about thirty miles further down.
Numerous creeks have been prospected and successfully worked along the branches of the Yukon and other rivers, some of them proving very rich ; and during the past two years richer and more extensive deposits of gold have been found in this country, until to-day, the interior of Alaska is believed by many
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THE YUKON GOLD FIELDS.
to be the largest placer mining district on this continent. Vari- ous estimates have been made of the amount of gold taken out in the past two years, some of them reaching as high as one mil- lion dollars, but it is doubtful if more than half that amount has been found. A number of miners have taken out as high as $12,000 or $15,000, biit, with few exceptions, these amounts were not washed out by individual miners, but by the combined work of several men.
In another chapter reference is made to the climatic conditions existing in Alaska. The difference in climate between the coast country and that of the interior is very marked. All along the Kuskoquim river, during the simmer months, there is an ex- cessive fall of rain, while in the interior it is very dry. Refer- ence has also been made to the condition of the ground in the interior, and it is from the fact that the frozen earth extends to a depth of many feet below the surface, that placer mining in the interior is very difficult.
The surface of the ground is covered with moss often to the depth of eighteen inches, and the hot rays of the sun during the long days of summer are not able to penetrate sufficiently to thaw the ground underneath. It is only where the moss is stripped, and the bare surface is reached by the sun's rays, that it thaws to any extent. This method is often resorted to by the miners, in order to get the ground in readiness for their sluicing work. The ice does not usually pass out of the Yukon until the first or middle of June, but when it starts, it goes quickly, and miners are soon hard at work, digging into the bars and working their sluices.
As early as the middle of September the sun becomes so low that the air is chilly, and in a few days ice forms, so that further working of the ground must be abandoned mintil the following year.
It must be remembered, however, that although one cannot depend upon much more than two months in which to work the ground, yet, from about the middle of June until the first of August, it is daylight, and the sun shines almost continually. Thus, what is lost in the length of the season is, in a measure, made up in the length of the day; and, if a man can stand the severe physical strain he must undergo, he can put many more hours in here than in placer mining camps in other parts of the country: and if his claim proves sufficiently rich to enable him
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to pay for hired help, darkness never interferes with work, for by running two or three shifts each day, he can work his mine, and have daylight to do it in, nearly the entire season.
The complaint has always been made by miners, in the Yukon, and by those who know of the difficulties that beset prospectors in that country, that several months in the year are lost, and when the season closes nothing can be done but while away the time in visiting neiglibors, making trips to the native settle- ments, or in hunting. But the happy thought came to some one to spend some of the time in summer prospecting and finding favorable locations; and in the winter to make fires upon the surface, thus thawing the ground until bedrock was reached, then to drift and tunnel, lifting the dirt to the surface, and piling it up so that when spring came, and water was to be had, he could wash his dirt and make it profitable. The last season closed with a determination on the part of many to carry out this method; a new impetus was given because several miners who had tried the plan the year previous found that the work thus done in the winter was not a useless expenditure of time and labor.
The largest nugget ever found on the Yukon was taken out by one Conrad Dahl, and was found in Franklyn gulch on March
A YUKON NUGGET.
78 INCH THICK.
IX INCHES THICK.
SIZE AND SHAPE.
26, 1894. It weighed exactly thirty ounces before, and twenty- nine and forty-five one hundredth ounces after being melted at
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THE CANYON, YUKON RIVER.
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THE YUKON GOLD FIELDS.
the mint in San Francisco. Dahl had prospected in the vicinity the summer before, and in the winter thawed the ground by burning wood on top, and continued this process until he reached bedrock, hauled the dirt out, and washed it afterwards. The nugget brought four hundred and ninety-one dollars and forty- five cents.
The next few years will probably determine whether there are any extensive deposits of gold quartz in the interior of Alaska. Most of the men who have gone into the interior have been men of very limited means, and the expense of carrying supplies in from the coast has been so great that their means was taxed to the utmost to land at the scene of their labors with food sufficient to last them a single season. It is thus seen that unless a "grub stake," at least, is made before winter sets in, they must go hungry or return to civilization. On this account they have not spent much time looking for quartz.
Within the past year companies have been formed and an effort made to test the quartz-bearing capacity of this country, with a very reasonable prospect that rich and valuable ledges will be found. It is fair to suppose when upon nearly every stream and creek gold is found in greater or less quantities, that somewhere in the mountains, whatever may be the climatic or other conditions that dissolve the ledges and turn the gold loose upon the broad level of the low lands, there must be rich gold quartz. There are instances, and not a few, where men in pros- pecting or working placer mines, have come across boulders or rocks containing gold, but, for the reasons stated above, they were not able to expend the labor necessary to follow up the " float."
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