Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1916-10-22


have gotten out of the territory. The sum
is more than ten times the amount of Uncle
Sans purchase price. 1t is about $8O,OOO,-
600, and the biologists say there are many
millions to come. The amount taken out
last year was two or three millions, and with
the cheap fuel from Uncle Sans railroad
this output will be greatly increased
This enormous quantity of gold has been
washed from creeks and their valleys sur
rounding this city. The valleys are streaked
with a bed rock which lies far down under
the earth. The gold-bearing strata is FIVE or
six feet in thickness, and it has an average
value of more than SIS per cubic yard There
is SO much of it that if it were confined to
one strip, about five times as wide as
country road, the strip would reach as far
as from New York to Philadelphia, and
every mile of it would contain values to the
amount of one and one-third million dollars.
That amount is known to exist. Prospect
ing is going on everywhere to find more,
and new strikes are bound to occur.
The miners are still working on the oldest
of the creeks. although in places they are al
most deserted. Werode by log hotels and
dance halls, now empty and silent; and
passed great masses of gravel, the monu-
ments of the work of the past. Leaving
Fairbanks, we motored up one stream and
down another, passing pile after pile of
these tailings. We passed through villages,
which were once almost cities, now going to
ruin, and after traversng the valleys of Fox
creek, Pedro creek, Engineer creek. Queene
Il. 4 -
after the dance ladies" of early days. stop
ped for the night at Chatanika on Cleary
Cleary is one of the whichest of all the creeks
of the Fairbanks district and today it is being
mined along the greater part of its course
This is true of most of the creeks. The old
tailings are being worked over, and the poor
er ground as yet untouched, is being ex-
plotted There are now about 1870 plants
busy getting out gold, and something like
500 men are employed. The values pro-
duced in 1913 and in 1914 amounted to about
81 100000, and the year before that the out
put was four millions. New methods of
mining are coming in. The open cut is much
used, and there is new scraper invented by
Fairbanks miner that proves very valuable.
There is an underground scraper which digs
anu Jumps AUTOMATICALLY anu lIeTe are sur
face scrapers which lift the earth to cable
by which it is carried to the sluice boxes
Among the most active of the plants are
those on Chatanika flats, where something
like 500 miners are now employed.
During my stay at Chatanika, I went into
some of the mines. The gold does not lie
on the surface of the earth 1t is seldom
found in the gravel of the streams, and it
cannot be clawed out with the grass roots.
The most of the valley is covered with
layer of moss and muck under which is
thick layer of gravel, and below that the bed
rock in which the gold is. The muck and
the gravel are frozen The cold of some
thousands of years ago has turned them
into one mass of ice, rock and sand as solid
as stone. The moss on the top has proved
an almost perfect non-conductor of heat,
and the only way to get at the gold is to
strip off the moss, and, by means Of steam,
to thaw and then dig your way down to.
where the gold lies. This may be so, 90, 80,
or even 100 feet, the gold strata itself being
still frozen.
In the Nolan mine they were working at
"a feet from the surface. We got into a
bucket, and were lowered down well OF
that depth From the bottom tunnels had
been dug off into the ice-frozen gold-bearing
rock We left the bucket and walked
through the tunnels stopping now and then