The Alaska daily empire., 1923-01-01
s17,004.124 S1S,250, ,00( Gold Placers

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 Gold Placers
 Placer mining has been done iI Alaska since 1880 and has yielded gold having a total value of $2S0000,- l 0OO Of this total more than s200,- 000000 has been mined since 1900. when the industry received it's first great stimulus by the gold output of the Nome district. Other bonanza deposits were soon discovered, and by 1906 the value of the annual out put of placer gold had reached $1S.- 600,000, and the industry employed I about 5000 men. From 1905 the an nual output declined, and by 1913 it's
 value was reduced to S10,6S0,000 and the number of miners to 4,700. It
 should be noted that this reduction t45 per cent) in the value of the | placer output took place before the war and that it indicated the rapid exhaustion of the bonanza deposits. From 1914 to 1917 the average value of the annual output of placer gold
 was about $10,000,0 900, and if the gen. eral industrial conditions had re- mained the same and railroad and road building and development of coal and petroleum had been acceler- ated, the annual placer output would probably not have declined below this amount But after 1917 the war began to affect Alaska industries SC.
 riously, and placer mining rapidly declined, reaching it's minimum in 1920, when the value of the output
 was only $3,S73,000 Since then, how ever, it has somewhat increased During the period of bonanza pla- cer mining the cost of operation was gradually but constantly lowered by improved methods of mining. espe- cially in gold dredging, the output of which increased in value from $20,0O0
 in 1903 to $2.300,000 in 1913. Dredges had been built so actively before the
 war that, in spite of adverse condi- tfons, they continued to increase their output. which did not reach it's
 was $2,679,000. The hard times that ] followed led not only to the shutting down of dredges already built but to the abandonment of some new proj- ects. The dredges reached their minimum output of gold in 1920, when it's value was $1,130,000. This rise and decline of gold dredging
 before 1920 was paralleled by a sim liar though smaller fluctuation in hydraulic and other mechanical min ing.
 Checked by War
 The passage from almost strictly manual to mechanical methods of placer mining was well under way
 when it was checked by the war. Had it not been thus interrupted the tran sition would have been more grad ual, and it would not have dealt so severe a blow to the communities supported by the returns from placer mining.
 Everyone who is interested in the prosperity of Alaska, which in the the returns from placar mining, will past has been so largely built upon naturally ask the question whether the gold placer reserves are suffi- eient to support again a large in- dustry. In 1919 an attempt was made to estimate the value of the placer gold still unmined. Such anl estimate could not of course take l account of possible new discoveries l it must include only those areas off auriferous gravels that have been more or less prospected Fine col l OTIS of gold are likely to be found in | most Alaska streams, but only a few Of these streams contain workable | placers. A rough estimate, which in- cludes only the auriferous gravels whose gold content is large enough to be profltably exploited by methods now used. shows that there is still about $35O,00000O worth of placer gold in the ground in Alaska. This estimate is based on very incom- plete data and it's value should there
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