The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1910-04-14
Great Chitina Basin Soon
to Have Daily Trains
RICHEST OF COPPER CAMPS
Next July Viii See the Begin
ninu Of Remarkable Develop
ments in One of the Worlds
Widest Glacier Areas, which
now Is Practically an lnacces-
sible Wilderness and within a
Year Will Have a Permanent
Population Of Thousands.


have become so few that the opening of
one of them is to-day an event of pic
turesque if not industrial Importance.
Up in Alaska next summer one of the
widest and most forbidding areas in the
world will be made comfortably avail
able to the most luxury-loving tourist
This region is not quite blank on the
maps, because it is filed with mountain
peaks visible for a hundred miles and
because among the comparatively few
white men who have entered it are gov
eminent biologists and surveyors.
. The region is the great Chitina, basin,
which extends eastward from the Copper
river, about 100 miles from the ocean.
This part of Alaska is exceedingly noun
famous and filled with glaciers. The
rivers that come from it are navigable
only in sections, and the few trails try
even the patience of the oldest sourdough.
To the average city man they would seem
no more passable than the side of
house. At any rate, they and the in
Vulnerable glacier streams are difficult
enough to have kept out all but few
prospectors and engineers. There are
some remarkably intrepid woman trav-
elers in Alaska. but none, SO far as is gen.
orally known, has ever been in the Chitina
country, and no man would think of going
In there for anything but big stake.
Under present conditions it is no pleasure
trip.
The mouth of the Chitina river is about
he riu
miles had hardly been travelled by white
man until three or four years ago, and
beyond there, up the Chitina and it's
numerous tributaries, an added fifty or
more miles, was an even harder journey,
even in winter, when, of course, it can
be made over the snow if one is willing to
camp out In below-zero weather.
About 1902 white men first heard from
the Indians that there were copper de-
posts in the region, and these deposits
of copper, now known to be among the
richest in the world, have been the cause
Of almost all the travel there has ever
been into the region. 1t is to reach the
copper properties that railroad is now
being built from the seacoast, at the
new town of Cordova, up the Copper
and Chitina rivers. When track laying
ended for the winter few weeks ago
the rails had reached the mouth of the
Tiekel river, l02 miles inland. The mouth
of the Chitina, thirty-six miles farther,
will be reached, it was announced the
other day, by July l of this year, and a
few months later the mines will be
reached
By the time the road has crossed the
swirling Copper river at the mouth of the
Chitina, town, where now there is moth
ing, will have sprung into being, and new
roads and trails will have made the region
readily accessible to the man willing to
walk. Soon thereafter comfortable daily
trains will be taking travellers into the
very heart of one of the widest glacial
regions in the world and bringing out
train loads of the richest copper ore ever
found
The suddenness of this transformation
makes it of peculiar interest. 1t is
typical of modern methods that this
strange, wild part of the earth, which
now can be visited only with hardships
of real severity, will almost in a day be-
come the pleasant, familiar route of tour
list travel
But even more remarkable will I'M
doubtedly be the industrial change 1t is
safe to predict that in all the thousands
of square miles of the Chitina basin,
where now there are not a hundred hui
man beings, another year will see popu-
lation of thousands and several perma-
nent towns, electric lighted, policed, with
| telephones, banks, hotels, churches and
clubs. The outcome is as certain as that
| the wealth is there waiting for railroad
| to haul it out.
There is at present in the district
only one property which mining men
would call mine, but this is of suffi-
| GENTLY proved richness to warrant the
building of the $4,000, 900 Copper River
| and Northwestern railroad The great
Bonanza mine, large amounts of ore of
which is 70 per cent. pure copper, is by
many recognized as the richest copper
| mine in the world. It's exposed face of
| purple and blue ore can be seen cleaning
| like an opal in the sun for thirty miles
| 1t is almost needless to say that such
properties as these are not for sale.
But the interesting thing is that the
] Bonanza is only one spot on contact
| of rock formations that has already been
| traced for 100 miles through the district
| This contact" is geologically favorable
to the existence of stores of mineral, and
| already there are thirty five groups OF
| claims on it, several of which have been
| slightly developed. Notwithstanding this
the belt has really hardly been prospected
and miners for years to come will have
| plenty of room to look for new Bonanzas
| while many of the existing prospects will
undoubtedly be developed into great
mines, too., when the railroad makes i,
| possible to open them at reasonable
cost Still further in the future the
| glaciers that now cut through the bel,
| will have receded far enough to expose
still further stores of great wealth now
covered with impenetrable ice.
The size of this copper region has beer
a matter of astonishment to engineers
i One could drop any of the other great
copper camps of the world into the Chi
tina basin today and lose it completely
In fact, it would probably contain all Of
them without interfering materially witt
its own development.
4 1t is obvious that region of this size
and inaccessibility is still practically I'm
known even to those who know it best