The Alaska citizen., 1917-09-24
CAMPS OLDEST
 PI. LAGER CT. AIM
 IS WORKED OUT

lS NOKhfD OO
 Although the day may come when further supply of gold will be dredged from it's gravels and from the huge piles of tailings that now cover it, the oldest placer mining claim in the Fairbanks district is now seeing the last season that it methods For when Hanot Brothers. it's owners, finish up their scraping operations this fal1, Discovery Pedro creek, staked by Felix Pedro in 1902, will have been worked out
 Whether or not the ground will ever be mined again is matter of conjecture In all probability it still contains some gold but whether an tract it is problematical By some people it is thought that a dredge can make money on any kind of ground which has once paid for the operations conducted on it by the more crude methods of mining, but dredge experts have been heard to make the statement that it is diff cult for a dredge to extract enough gold to pay for is operation from the residue of gravel, bedrock and tailings, after a scraper such as the Hanots are using has once been ope- rated For this reason there is divergence of opinion as to whether or not dredge operations in the flu ture will pay on Discovery Pedro.
 It was the news of the discovery of gold on this claim in the summer of 1902 that caused the stampede to the Fairbanks district from Dawson, from Yukon river camps all the way down and from Nome. Anxious for new fields to explore, prospectors  came to the Fairbanks district from everywhere, and as result discov- cries were made on all of the other creeks which have been or are still producers.
 Mining operations on Discovery Pedro, however, did not start until the summer of 1903. At that time the discoverer of the ground and of the camp, Felix Pedro, was in part nership with the present day Hanot brothers father, from which part nership the Hanots derive their own ership of the ground.
 Many sets of laymen have operat- ed on the old claim, some to make big money and others to go broke. No great fortunes have been made out of it, but it has, when worked under efficient management, been steady producer. The ground is what is considered shallow at the present time, but in the early days it was considered too deep for opencutting, consequently all operations on 1t were conducted by drifting. At vari- ous times since then, however. open cut operations have been conducted on it.
 And it is opencut work that is being done now by the Hanot boys, but it is being done with scraper instead of the anticipated hand meth ods The ground being worked in this manner was first drifted in 1904 and 1905 and, although the operat- ors who worked it at that time made good money, Hanot Brothers are talk ing out a large amount of gold by going four feet deeper into bedrock than did their predecessors. They will finish up their work on the old claim this fall and will then move to Discovery Goldstream, in which they hold a three-quarters interest, where they will prepare to operate extensively next year.
 Fritz Nelson, miner recently in jured in an explosion, was operated on in the general hospital at Juneau | where it was found necessary to re- move the left eye The doctors also performed a skin grating operation on the stump of the left hand, which was lost in the accident.