Great Falls tribune., 1886-01-02
sen. JONES' ALASKA GOLD NINE.
A Big Bonanza in Alaska, and the
Senator on Top Again.

!
Jones, who ON March 4th Of this yea
entered upon his third term as {. S
Senator from Nevada, is once more OF
the high road to fortune by virtue 0
his share in the Paris gold mine Oh
Douglass Island, Alaska When Jone
was elected to the Senate IN 1872, t.
succeed ex-Gov. Nye Of Nevada, h
was the. boss millionaire OF ths
Comstock lode, and was reputed to b;
worth some S5,oO0,000 as his share O.
the profits Of the bonanza struck il
the Grown Point mine, at that time
the richest mine Oh the Comstocb, but
which was soon surpassed by the biz
bonanzas OF tae Consolidated Sirgini;
and California, which gave their col
ossal fortunes to Flood 4 O'Brien
Mackay, and Fair.
Like other mon who have become
suddenly rich By q stroke Of good
luck, Jones embarked in many and
varied speculations, and dropped his
money almost as rapidly as he had ac-
quired it. He went into a great min
ing enterprise in Kern county, Cali
fornla, In company with ex-senator
Stewart and the late Irenor W. Park
The enterprise ended in a total fail
ure and the loss of very large amount
Of money. He started the watering
place Of Santa Monica, near Los An
gelos, and built railroad which never
paid its running expenses. He built
an extravagant building for Turk
ish bath in San Francisco, and finally
in 1879, shortly after he had entered
upon his second term in the Senate.
he invested his bottom dollar in the
delusiye Sierra Nevada mine, which
was expected to rival the Consolidate
ed Virginia in the bigness of it's bo-
nanza.
The Sierra Nevada, at the north
end Of the Comstock lode, had been
worked for several years, the assess
ments had been many and frequent,
the dividends nil The shares had
dropped down, down, to IS cents, when
news came that bonanza had been
struck The mining sharps and spec
rlators Of San Francisco had decided
that Consolidated Virginia was about
played out, and they rushed into
Sierra Nevada an ran the shares up to
S2l5. The higher they went the more
eager were the spectators to get in
Even such astute mining men as
Jones, Flood, Skae, and many others
were caught. The bubble burst and
the shares dropped almost as rapidly
as they had risen. The are again down
to Is cents Jones' Crown Point mil
lions had changed hands, and the
mining outlook on the Pacific coast
was decidedly gloomy.
Nearly coincident with the collapse
Of the Sierra Nevada boom, gold was
found by two prospectors from Sitka
in small creek on the coast Of Alas
ka, near the Indian villages Of Takou
and AUX, about $50 miles northeast OF
Sitka. The prospectors followed the
course of the creek up gorge between
high and PERCEPTIONS mountain to its
source in plateau about three miles
from tide water, and there found indi-
cations of surface deposits of free
gold and several promising veins of
quartz, When news Of the discovery
reached Sitka it stirred up the few
white residents of that sleepy little
town, and there was a general exodus
to the new diggings. The placer and
quartz veins were quickly located and
claimed, the officers OF the United
States steamship jamestown, station
ed at Sitka, being early and eager To-
Gators. They expected that when the
news reached San Francisco it would
cause an excitement there and rush
to invest in the newly discovered gold
field. La this they were disappointed.
Mining interests in San Francisco
were under q cloud of distrust, and
the moderate and small operators
were cleaned out, and had nothing
left to invest in Alaska mines, even if
they had believed in them, which they
didn't.
The camp at Harrisburg, since
changed to Juneau, attracted only
the floating whites of Sitka and Nran-
gle, with a contingent of gold hunters
from the exhausted Cassiar placers in
British Columbia. Every foot of
placer ground was staked off and
worked with more or less success, but
on the quartz lodes, which needed
capital to deyelope them, work was
limited to the assessment work requir-
ed by law to complete the titles to the
claims. There was no capital III the
camp to pay for machinery, and none
could be had from San Francisco
The second and third summers
brought few recruits from San Fran