USA > Alaska > Our northern domain: Alaska, picturesque, historic and commercial > Part 6
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The nearest post office was one hundred miles away, across Norton Sound, and there were no mails after the winter season began. But before the ice broke, rumor had winged its way up the Yukon to Daw- son, and when June came there was a population of some four hundred, living in tents and driftwood shanties. Steamers reaching Seattle during the summer spread the news, and started a fresh stampede. The thousands who reached Nome from the States, and from the upper reaches of the Yukon, found themselves frozen out; or, so, at least, they thought; for they did not attempt to locate new placer grounds.
CHAPTER VIII.
OUTSIDERS AND INSIDERS AT NOME.
M R. ALFRED H. BROOKS describes the exciting period that followed: - " Meanwhile, in the early summer, there was any- thing but a contented community at Nome. The newcomers had found the whole region covered with location notices and very little mining being done. The professional claim stakers had followed their usual practice of blanketing the creeks with location notices, under powers of attorney, and then holding many claims without doing any prospecting, in the hope of being able to take advantage of any discoveries made by the labors of others. In the early part of July probably less than seven hundred men were actually engaged in mining, while upward of a thousand were idle, with neither prospect of em- ployment as miners nor opportunity to prospect in the district. It should be remembered that at that time gold had been found in only a very small area adjacent to Anvil Creek. These idle men believed that many of the locations were illegal, as they unquestionably were under a strict interpretation of the statutes, for as the law requires an actual discovery of gold on each claim it is obvious that a man who staked twenty to thirty claims in a few days could not have determined the presence of gold in them. It was also charged that many claims had been located by aliens and were therefore not legal preemptions. Under these conditions it is not to be wondered that an era of ' claim jumping ' began, during which practically every property of any pro- spective value was restaked. It was then not uncommon to find a claim corner marked by half a dozen stakes, each of which represented a different claimant.
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" The nearest United States commissioner was at St. Michael, and there was therefore practically no means of enforcing civil law. In fact, there were no representatives of the Government at Nome except an officer and a small detachment of soldiers which had been sent over from the army post at St. Michael in the spring. On the commandant of this handful of soldiers rested the responsibility of maintaining law and order among a thousand discouraged and angry men, a task made all the more difficult because he was without any actual legal authority. He deserves credit for meeting the situation as far as it lay in his power by patrolling property to which there were rival claimants and by attempting to settle the constantly rising disputes. Discontent was rife, and matters went from bad to worse. July 10 a so-called ' miners' meeting ' was called for the purpose of discussing the situation, and a resolution was there presented setting forth the grievances of those who believed that the claim locations had not been made in accordance with the United States statutes. While it must be admitted that the unlimited staking was undoubtedly illegal, yet this meeting was mainly attended by those who, for one reason or another, had not succeeded in getting hold of placer claims. . . .
" This meeting, though no doubt tending to increase the dissatis- faction, was entirely within the legal rights of the individuals who believed that they had been wronged. Therefore the peremptory dis- persing of the crowd attendant at the meeting by the commandant of the troops was a high-handed proceeding, entirely unwarranted either in law or equity. The tension grew day by day, and conflicts between rival claim owners became not infrequent."
The military authorities had been sent over to Nome from St. Mi- chael's, at the request of Dr. A. N. Kittleson, the recorder of the dis- trict, who reported that the original " stakers," while attempting to work their claims, " were obliged to stand over them with guns all the time to prevent them from being overrun by parties of gamblers, pro- fessional jumpers, and other riffraff."
The outsiders demanded that the original claims, which had been
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laid out thirteen hundred and twenty by six hundred and sixty feet, according to the statute, should be reduced to five hundred feet in length, and they proposed to do so by force. At the miners' meeting, a resolution was introduced declaring all locations void, and it was arranged that as soon as it was passed, the men who had been stationed on Anvil Mountain should be notified by a bonfire at Nome. They could then rush down and restake the claims on Anvil Creek. The lieutenant and two of his men, who were stationed on the platform, ordered that the resolution should be withdrawn within two minutes. This was done. But, nevertheless, many of the claims were jumped, and gave rise to long litigation. The Company is said to have spent more than two hundred thousand dollars in lawyers' and court fees to retain its property.
Mr. Brooks continues the story: - " The situation was suddenly relieved in an unexpected manner. It was accidentally discovered that the beach sands were rich in gold. It appears that the beach placers were found almost simultaneously by a soldier of the barracks and John Hummel, an old Idaho prospector who was too sick to leave the coast. Within a few days the mutterings of discontent were almost silenced because it was found that good wages could be made with rockers on the beach. All the idle men went to work as fast as they could obtain implements. As it gradually became known that the beach sands for several miles were gold bearing and could be made to yield from $20 to $100 a day to the man, a veritable frenzy seized the people of Nome. A large part of the population went to work with shovels and rockers. During the height of the excitement it is estimated that there were 2,000 men engaged in beach mining. The yield of the beach placers is estimated at more than $1,000,000, and this was practically all taken out with hand rockers in less than two months.
" There was one legal complication relative to beach mining which threatened to be serious, but ended rather ludicrously. Previous to the discovery of the beach gold many so-called ' tundra claims ' had been staked, which stretched inland from the ocean. A group of these,
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including the richest beach deposits, had been segregated and passed into the control of one company. When beach mining began this com- pany claimed that it owned the beach and warned off all trespassers unless they paid a royalty of 50 cents a day for the privilege of mining along the water front. Most of the miners, however, contended that a 60-foot strip from high water was public property and paid no heed to the warning against trespassing. The company thereupon appealed to the commandant of the troops, and he warned off all beach miners. The order was not obeyed, and he finally arrested about three hundred men. At this time the situation reached the point of absurdity. There being no civil magistrate at hand before whom these men could be tried, no building in which they could be confined, nor any funds from which they could be supported while awaiting trial, the perplexed officer was forced to discharge all his prisoners, who promptly returned to their rockers on the beach. Later decisions of the Land Office have not upheld the claims of this company to the gold in the beach, for a sixty-foot strip of the beach has remained open for mining to all comers."
The town on the beach was first called Anvil City; during the sum- mer of 1899, it was renamed Nome, possibly from the Eskimo word " Kinome," signifying " I don't know; " and its population of more than three thousand was sheltered in such shacks as could be secured. Lumber at one hundred and fifty dollars a thousand made frame houses luxuries for only the very prosperous. Coal at one hundred dollars a ton was not in the reach of all. The driftwood on the beach was husbanded as if it were gold. The tents, shacks and cabins stretched along a muddy street for a mile, flanked by the treeless Siberian tun- dra, and facing the wild surf of the cold, shallow sea.
Corner lots, with titles as uncertain as the shifting sands, were sold as high as ten thousand dollars. The population met and elected a Mayor and Town Council, and by common consent, this City Govern- ment, though without definite legal authority, made and enforced suit- able ordinances. A Fire Department and Police Department were
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organized; the Government established a Post Office; and the " Nome News," the first newspaper, began publication. Wages were paid as high as two dollars an hour. Though there were dozens of saloons and gambling-houses, where many a successful adventurer spent at night all that he had got during the day, still the condition of affairs seemed amply to justify General Greely's assertion " that as a whole, the inhabitants of Alaska are the most law-abiding body of men " that could be found. There was a great deal of illness from the effects of exposure, and especially from an epidemic of typhoid fever caused by the use of the surface water of the tundra.
The result of the excitement aroused by the arrival at Seattle of some three million dollars' worth of gold is well described by Mr. Brooks: - " Professional promoters and stock jobbers were not backward in taking advantage of this excitement, and there was the usual crop of flamboyant prospectuses. Scores of companies were incorporated to mine gold at Nome and much stock was sold. Though not a few of these ventures were intended to be legitimate enterprises, practically all of them were doomed to failure because of the complete ignorance on the part of many of the promoters of the character of the deposits, suitable methods of mining, and general commercial conditions. Beach-mining enterprises were the favorite because of the supposed richness of the placers, and especially because no capital was required to purchase claims. The almost incredible record of the first year's beach mining appealed to the popular mind, and its interest was main- tained through the newspapers and through transportation and mining companies' circulars, which published the most preposterous state- ments. Not a few so-called mining experts asserted that the gold in the beach was inexhaustible because the supply was constantly re- newed by the waves from the ocean bottom. It was easy to main- tain that, if a man with a rocker could make $20 a day on the beach, a plant which could handle twenty times as much material would yield untold wealth. There was a flood of gold-saving devices, varying from a patent gold pan hung on a pivot and turned by a crank to complex
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aggregates of wheels, pumps, sieves, and belts, which required a 100- horsepower engine for their operation.
"' The golden sands of Nome ' was the slogan which inspired thou- sands to engage passage for the El Dorado months in advance of the sailings. Reaching Nome was far easier than going to the Klondike, for the gold seeker could be landed at his destination from an ocean steamer. Here there was no winnowing of the persevering and enter- prising from the shiftless and indolent as at the Chilkoot Pass (the gateway of the Klondike). In consequence, the crowd of men that reached Nome were less well fitted for frontier life than those who went to Dawson.
" In 1900 the ice on Bering Sea broke early, and some small vessels skirting the shoreward side of the ice floes dropped anchor at Nome the latter part of May, but the large steamers did not arrive until the middle of June. By July 1 upward of 50 vessels had discharged pas- sengers and freight on the beach. It is estimated that the first and second sailing's brought over 20,000 people to the peninsula. There was then a solid row of tents stretching along five miles of the beach, and the water front was piled high with freight of all kinds. The newcomers found little to encourage them. Those that had wintered in the peninsula had industriously extended their stakes so that a man could travel for days and hardly be out of sight of a location notice. To add to the discouragement and confusion, smallpox was introduced from one of the vessels, and had it not been for the prompt action of Capt. D. H. Jarvis, of the Revenue-Cutter Service, it would have be- come a serious epidemic. The inexperienced men who landed at Nome, not finding the El Dorado their fancies had painted, were loud in their denunciation of the region. Many in the conrse of a few days' tramp- ing of the beach became self-styled experts on placer mining and stren- uously announced that the auriferous gravels of the peninsula had practically been exhausted.
" During the month of July every conceivable kind of gold-saving appliance was installed on the shore, but few except those of simplest
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design paid even running expenses. Nevertheless there can be no ques- tion that a strong company controlling a considerable strip of the beach could by the use of steam shovels have profitably extracted what gold had been left in the sands. But under the conditions of public ownership of the beach, if values were found in any given locality, men swarmed in with rockers and quickly worked it out. This made it impossible to extract the beach gold at a profit by other than light equipments readily movable from one rich spot to another.
" Probably the most ill-conceived enterprises were those planned to dredge gold under the sea. Though the upper layer of these sands is more or less auriferous, the difficulties of excavation are such as to make it improbable that it can be profitably mined. The severe storms and lack of shelter prevent the use of dredges, except possibly during one month in the year. Many of these dredging schemes were based on a theory (held by some who were entirely ignorant of the origin of the beach gold and who refused to be instructed) that the auriferous sands are swept in from the sea. ... On August 9 a severe south- westerly storm practically demolished the more elaborate appliances for gold saving and strewed the beach for miles with débris. This ended beach mining for that year except where the simplest apparatus was in use."
The enormous amount of litigation, caused by jumping of claims and the actions of so-called " pencil and hatchet men," who located claims, not for legitimate mining but for speculative purposes, finally induced the Government to form a new judicial district, and appoint a Federal Judge. This court, however, proved to be corrupt; among its questionable acts was the placing of receivers over valuable prop- erty, " from which they extracted gold, in spite of the fact that they were without bond, and that the rightful owners had no check on the amount of gold being taken out."
This distrust of the judiciary, so well-founded, kept capital from investing in large enterprises, and the influx of thousands of inexperi-
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enced men naturally led to tremendous suffering and disappoint- ment.
Time, however, generally corrects abuses, and weeds out the incom- petent. The careful survey of the peninsula, the settlement of litiga- tion, the introduction of improved machinery and of sluicing ditches - estimated at an aggregate of three hundred miles in extent -in 1909, gave rise to the prediction of experts that the gold production in that region will increase rather than diminish. Its possibilities are roughly estimated at three hundred and twenty-five million dollars from the placer mines only, with no apparent limit to the exploitation of the mountains from which the gold has disintegrated.
Nome grew, like a mushroom, into a city of twenty thousand inhab- itants, and at first there was a good deal of lawlessness, so that life and property were unsafe; but, as the undesirables were gradually weeded out, the town settled down into its summer and winter per- manence.
Perhaps the most succinct summary of the recent history of Alaska may be found in an article by the Honorable Walter E. Clarke, the governor of the territory. He says : -
" Ten years ago, Alaska was ' discovered ' by a good many persons. Nine years ago, nearly twenty thousand of them started on that elec- trifying stampede to Nome. The site of the present town was a deso- late tract of tundra when Lindeberg, Lindblom, and Brynteson discov- ered gold in a creek, four miles away, at the base of Anvil Mountain. In 1899, a good many miners stampeded from other parts of Alaska and from the Yukon Territory (Klondike), but the following year came the Rush of the Twenty Thousand. Some of the adventurous army half encircled the globe to reach the magic gold camp on Bering Sea. A good deal has happened since then. The riches of the Tanana Valley were not known until several years later, and Fairbanks, now perhaps the largest town in Alaska, is only half as old as Nome. Copper and coal have been uncovered in the southern part of the territory, and railroads are building. An ocean cable has been laid from Seattle,
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and land-telegraph lines all over the territory are supplemented by a system of wireless telegraphy. Wagon roads and trails are being built by a commission of officers of the United States Army. More than twenty new lighthouses have been erected. Commerce has grown."
Governor Clarke well adds that a commerce of fifty million dollars a year deserves adequate protection against the perils of the coast line; and the tremendous deposits of copper and coal, which will un- doubtedly supply the western coast for decades to come, will justify the expense of building railways into those Arctic wastes.
People fairly well informed, who would not think of asking the prospective visitor if he would go into the country over the ice, or would travel entirely with dog-teams, or suggest that Juneau was near Nome, or even take it for granted that the Klondike is in Alaska, have really little conception of the immensity of that territory, or of its chief characteristics.
CHAPTER IX.
THE VASTNESS OF ALASKA.
I TS area, as far as recent surveys may be trusted, is not far from five hundred and ninety thousand square miles, equivalent to all of the United States east of the Rockies, with the exception of the Gulf States; or even to the combined area of the thirteen original States, including what is now Maine, besides Vermont, Kentucky, Ten- nessee, West Virginia, Ohio, and almost half of Washington; or, again, to more than twice all Germany. Sitka and the Pribilof Islands lie on nearly the same degree of latitude, and the southernmost limit of Alaska corresponds with Hamburg. Nome is twelve hundred miles northwest of Juneau, and two thousand and seven miles northwest of Seattle. From the Tongass National Forest, at the farthest east, the stretch is about sixty degrees of longitude - not far from twenty- five hundred miles; so that, in a certain sense, it is true that Attu Island, the last of the Aleutians, is farther west of San Francisco than San Francisco is west of Eastport. Its coast line amounts to not less than eleven thousand miles.
Mr. C. C. Georgeson, special agent in charge of Alaska Investiga- tions, estimates that there are in the territory about one hundred thou- sand square miles, or one-sixth of the whole region, suitable for agriculture and pasturage. " As a matter of fact," he says, " the area is probably very much larger since a considerable part of the mountain territory will afford pasture." This is a little more than the area of the combined States of New York and Pennsylvania. Mr. Georgeson believes that Alaska can support a population of thirty persons to the square mile, and he instances Finland, which, geograph- ically, is not unlike Alaska, and in fifty thousand square miles supports
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a population of three millions. He says: - " We have reasons for believing that Alaska may equal Finland in agricultural production. Temperature is the chief controlling factor in the production of agri- cultural crops, and the temperatures, both in the coast region and in the interior of Alaska during the growing season, compare favorably with the recorded temperatures of Finland. . .. Finland is a noted dairy country. The agricultural exports consist chiefly of butter, cheese, and beef from slaughtered dairy animals. In Alaska cattle feed can be grown in any quantity, and it can, therefore, also become a great dairy country."
Although Congress has enlarged the homestead in Alaska to three hundred and twenty acres, lack of transportation facilities, or the excessive cost of transportation, restricts the number of people who would otherwise flock to the country.
The tourist who takes the usual summer trip to Alaska sees only the coast fringe of one district - the Sitkan or southeastern, which contains, according as it is reckoned, not more than a twelfth, or a twentieth, of the whole territory. There are five other divisions. Al- though, of course, it is impossible within the limits of a small volume to cover them all with much detail, we will visit them all in imagination, and try to picture to ourselves, in some adequate way, the wonderful region which the energy of man is beginning to tame to civilization.
All tourists agree as to the perfect charm of the steamship route to Sitka. Leaving either Tacoma or Seattle, and traversing the Strait of Juan de Fuca, skirting the mountainous island of Vancouver - key of the Pacific - for two hundred and seventy miles, through the often dangerous Discovery Passage, or Valdez Narrows, where so many ship- wrecks have occurred, owing to the tremendous tidal current which runs through it, back and forth, at the rate of fourteen knots an hour; thence for forty miles across Queen Charlotte Sound, exposed to the sweep of the Pacific swells, and made misty by the Kuro Siwo; at length, after the long sweep of Hecate Strait, one reaches the boundary of Alaska, at the southern extremity of the Alexander Archipelago.
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THE VASTNESS OF ALASKA.
All the way there have been enchanting views of deep and pictur- esque fjords, of snow-clad mountains, and magnificent glaciers. Hun- dreds of islands have loomed up, as if to cut off further progress, but have, as it were, stepped aside, leaving narrow passages, where the greatest steamships could tie up to precipitous banks. The multitudi- nous islands, which form a fringe between the mainland and the open Pacific, nearly all the way from Puget Sound to Skaguay, Alaska - indeed one might say also from Prince William Sound to the very end of the Aleutian Islands - are evidently the peaks and summits of mountain ranges which have been sunk beneath the sea. The extreme depths of the water-ways correspond to the valleys in the inner moun- tains that run parallel to the coast; and the canals, arms, inlets, bays and fjords, that give such marvellous diversity to the coast, correspond to the passes and cañons on land.
Alaska is separated from British Columbia by Portland Canal, a deep fjord running for about a hundred miles, part of the way diag- onally through the Coast Range, thus furnishing a comparatively easy pass into the Yukon basin. The steamships all stop at Ketchikan, which is the distributing-point for the great mining district of that region. For many years, salmon-fisheries and canning were the principal inter- est of the Ketchikan district. Salmon-fishers were among the first to discover the mineral wealth of that region. In 1892, James Bowden discovered gold in paying quantities on Annette Island. After the disappointing outcome of the Cassiar gold-quest, some of the argo- nauts returned to Ketchikan, and exploited the claims in that vicinity. The town, in 1902, had a population of about seven hundred. It is provided with excellent hotels and shops. Launches and sloops abound, and the tourist might spend many days in cruising among the fasci- nating islands of the archipelago.
He will surely wish to go to New Metlakatla, the home of the colony of Timpsean Indians, who, under the ministrations of William Dun- can, have attained a high degree of civilization. William Duncan came to Fort Simpson in 1857, as a lay worker for the Church Mission So-
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ciety. The Indians in that vicinity, amounting to perhaps ten or fif- teen thousand men, were fierce savages. It was even charged that they were addicted to cannibalism, that they frequently ate the dead bodies of their relatives, even those who had died of disgusting diseases. But Sir George Simpson, who tells these terrible stories of them, also acknowledges that they were peculiarly comely, strong, and well-grown, and were ingenious in carving stone, wood and ivory.
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