Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-10-22

Fairbanks.
- HAVE Just returned from two
III day automobile trip through some
of the richest of the gold-bearing
q regions of interior Alaska. Fair
banks has produced almost one-third
of all the gold we have gotten out of
the territory. The sum is more than
ten times the amount of Uncle Sans
purchase price. 1t is about Sso,o0O.ooo.
and the biologists say there are many
millions to come. The amount taken
out last year was two or three mil
lions, 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 surrounding this city. The val
legs are streaked with 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 1t that If 1t were
confined to one strip. about five times
as wide as a country road, the strip
would reach as far as from New YORK
to Philadelphia. and every mile OF IL
would contain values to the amount
of ono and one-third million dollars.
That amount is known to exist. Pros
pecting Is going on everywhere to hnd
more. and new strikes are bound to
occur.
The miners are still working on the
Oldest Of the creeks. although in places
they are almost deserted. We rode by
~
and silent: and passed great masses of
gravel, the monuments of the work OF
the past. Leaving Fairbanks. we mo-
torsd 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 traversing the valleys
of Fox creek, Pedro creek. Engineer
creek. Queenie creek. Ester creek and
other creeks named after the dance Ia
dies of early days, stopped for the
night at Chatanika on Cleary. Cleary
10 one of the richest of all the creeks of
the Fairbanks district and today II 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 poorer ground, as
yet untouched. is being exploited.
There are now about 13e plants busy
getting out gold, and something ike
Id
produced in 1913. and in 1914 amounted
to about s7.500.000. and the year be-
fore that the output was four millions.
New methods of mining are coming in.
The open cut is much used, and there is
a new scraper invented by Fairbanks
miner that proves very valuable. There
fs an underground scraper which digs
and dumps automatically; and there are
surface scrapers which lift the earth
to a cable by which 1t is carried to the
siuice boxes. Among the most active
of the plants are those on Chatanika
mats. where something like 500 miners
are now employed.
During my stay st Chatanika I went
into some of the mines. The gold does
not lie on the surface of the earth. It
Is seldom found in the gravel of the
streams. and 1t cannot be clawed out
with the grass roots. The most of the
valley is covered with a layer of moss
and muck, under which is a thick layer
Of gravel. and below that the bedrock
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
a. solid As stone. The moss on the tor
has proved an almost perfect non con-
ductor Of heat. and the only way to get
1t tho gold 10 to strip of the moss. and
BY means OF steam, to thaw and then
04g-vougLW0G avn - WHARF the -0oll