Douglas Island news., 1904-11-30
JUNEAU.

Ex-Governor Swineford of Ketchikan, recently visited Juneau, and when he returned to his home he wrote the fol- lowing as a prelude to an article de scribing the mines in this section:
 Laying aside the prejudice born of local pride, regard for the truth will compel the confession that the city of Juneau is far and away ahead of all other towns of Southeastern Alaska in commercial and industrial importance, excluding the great mines and mills on Douglas Island as one single particular exception, in deference to the incor- porated towns of Treadwell and Doug las to which they are the main support. Next to Sitka and Wrangell it is the oldest town in Southeastern Alaska, though but lately emerged from it's teens. and is not only the largest in point of population and substantial wealth. but has come to be generally recognized as the center of the trade and commerce of the whole of all that part of Alaska lying east and south of Prince William Sound. It's wholesale and retail trade extends to and beyond all parts of the dirtrict named, and it's mercantile establishments are of a magnitude that would do credit to city boasting ten times its population. Particularly is this true of the great store of the B. M. Berends Mercantile company, the moving spirit in which came to Alaska twenty years ago in poor health and not more than that many dollars in his pocket, but who may now be considered the merchant prince of the country to which he thus came practically a bankrupt in ali things save the sterling honesty which has since marked his career and a fixed determination to win the success be 1 has achieved. The city contains within itself all the business and industrial establishments which constitute the primary clements essential to the growth of a great city, and that her career will henceforward be upward ! and onward, in an exceptional degree, now seems assured beyond any pos sible contingency other than that of | some great and unlocked for calamity | calculated to permanently stay the progress of the entire district of which | she is now the commercial, industrial, and if not already so, very certain to become the political center as we'll.
 But it was not of Juneau as a city, | and the home of more than ordinarily intelligent, energetic and enterprising people the writer of this started out to enlighten his readers, but rather to speak of the place as the center of great gold mining district, the promise of whose unbounded productive wealth is beyond computation. The record of l the great mines and mills of Douglas Island is too we'll known to require, or indeed justify, extended reference to them here; the millions they have al ready contributed to the wealth of their fortunate owners, and incidentally to that of the country at large, not only tells the story more plainly and forcib- ly than it can be framed in words. but gives assurance of many more mil lions to be recovered from its depths in the years to come. Suffice it to say that the Mining Journal has it from the best authority that in at least one of these great mines values are increas- ing to an extent sufficient to afford as- surance of a very substantial increase in product of bullion. Some of the ore milling as high as ten dollars to the ton.