The Alaska citizen., 1911-04-10
THE OUTLOOK.

.I. .or'aLt existence falrbankS has experienced enough sctbacks to put au ordinary town out of business. Fortunately is citizens are not of The kind easily daun,ed. and there yet remain 10 cuj y the fruits of The fu'ur- many of the pioneers of lie camp Ii is deyoutly 10 be hoped these old,imers have by this 'i4e convinced themselves that it is Wed rth tacir while to hang on" fr th.re'~ good time coming and i.'s on the run.
 Just when things were looking rosiest Tor the camp, in 1906, came the fire |; was pretty bad but the eli crpri-e inherent in Nor, herners son -ook the sting out of the ca 'amisy and a bigger and better Fair banks resulted. hat winter there Wa- aa immense amount f work h,a kcd out n all of jhe creek and ,en million outuu. was in sight Then came he strikes. This cut down work and incomes all around and many went broke With matters adjusted lyr work on large scale in the I flowing summer Dame Ma ,4ge t.ok d hand and there was a scarcity of warer S-ampedts, all If them unwarrantcd 70 great ex 's'.r, frequently kept the labor mar. A,t poorly supplied and bush fire destroyed thousands of cords of wood With matters adjusting them sslycs af'er all ot these happenings comes the Washington-Alaska bank failure and he crpHling of the town financially.
 But with the exception of the last, all f these "seourges" have been overcome, and the bank smash even does not look so bad as at first There's to be a dividend paid today and there's hope for another in the near future
 And ,he future l.oks rosier than ii ever did before, so far as the rerlnanency cf he camp is concern, ed With three dredges practically certain to be at work next summer on Pedro, Twin and Fairbanks creeks a new era in placer mining will have been inau4ura'cl here Nearly all of the old producers will soon be in process of Icing worked over" with the mast modern machinery. and skilled miners are of the opinion they will yield under this treatment enr fully as much as they have done 10 the pick and shovel Tn other words they believe that in the very ground that has produced more than fifty mIlion dollars there is fully as much yet 10 be recovered by The more efficient methods.
 The coming of the dredges has heightened the lives of these creeks as producers by many years. Be fore operations on these will cease there will De new creeks brought in as producers, as there has been every year in the history of the camp. This year We have Fish and Eva creeks, with excellent prospects on some cf the others, and it is not seriously believed by anyone that all the rich streams even in the immediate neighborhood have been discovered It took five years to discover one of the very best creeks ill the district, in spite of the fact that it lay right at cur doors, and when it is considered that prospec- tor can go for hundreds of miles up one side of the Panama valley and the same distance down the other side, and be in the gold country all the way, the idea that all of the rich creeks have been discovered seems absurd.
 Along with the dredging will prob ably be commenced, on a much larg- CT scale, the hydraulic mining of hundreds of miles of gold bearing gravels. The vast fields of aurifer- ous gravels along the foot of the
 
 been traced for nearly one hundred miles. In places they are more than 20 miles wide, and their thickness, while yet undemonstrated. is known to be enormous. Development of these has already been commenced and it is certain that if success at tends the Berry & Hamil undertaking there will be thousands of men em- ployed by the large companies sure to be attracted
 Considering the small amount of capital that has been expended in the quartz operations the showing is marvellous one, and there appears no doubt that in a very few years the industry will have attained large proportions.