The Daily Alaska empire., 1944-09-22

As Tom Ashby, Juneau resident since May II, 1884, stands on Court House hill, near his home, and | looks over modern Juneau he can mentally trace the growth of the town step by step, for when he first landed 60 years ago the town was but a mining camp, four years old
 Tom Ashby was only 19 when he and his brother. O. w Ashby, landed in Juneau to look for some gold prospects And, in the 1 intervening years, he has found 1 the gold that many men look for. in vain and he has seen the Yukon and Nome and many other gold 1 fields. He has lived and played and hunted in the greatest will derness left on the West Coast of North America. Today he can sit and think of all his adventures But. more than that, he can plan the next trip to Windham Bay, where he located claims 13 years ago. This year, for the first time, he was too i'll to prospect.
 Juneau-Tent City
 Tn 1884 Juneau consisted of a tent city on the beach, with a population of less than 300 The white mans town was located where Main and Front Streets are today, and the Indians lived fur ther down the beach in their own village.
 Roads out of town then were non- existent. The road to Silver Bow Basin was merely a trail although there was more activity up there then, than now. Three small mills and mines and prospect holes flourished in that early day
 The Treadwell mill was just be- ing constructed then; the founda- ton holes had just been dug. Transportation across the channel was your own responsibility. If you did not own a boat you could take an Indian canoe.
 On Yukon Stampede
 In the summer of 1886, Tom Ashby left Juneau and joined the stampede into the Yukon, He went by way of Dyea and Chilkoot Pass into Northwest Territory, finding gold along the Stewart River.
 The next year he went to Forty mile and located claims on the South Fork of the Fortymile River. It was a cold, bitter winter. Tom Williams, accompanied by an In- dian guide, undertook to trans port mail out to Juneau. Before they reached the coast Williams succumbed to the biting weather and the Indian was badly frost bitten The couple had planned to hike out with the mail to Dyea and then proceed down Lynn Canal lO UullGdu Dy IllStldil NCllOC.
 Goes To Nome
 In 1900 Ashby went to Nome, where he stayed, this time, for l2 years before coming back home to Juneau Even after those few years he noticed change in the town. It was growing larger and more modern. How different from 1884 when there had been no official representative of the law and where the miners council ran things. Judge States had been the first Commissioner Ashby does not remember now whether the Com missioner arrived in 1884 or in '95.
 Joe, Tom Prospect
 Joe Juneau was still in town and young Tom Ashby made his first prospecting trip with Joe, to Gla- cier Bay; a few years later came the Chinese Riots when boat load of Chinese coolie labor was shipped out of Juneau and told never to come back. The Chinese were not harmed, only scared to death by light dynamite charges placed on and around their dwell ings. Thus ended the big Tread well Corporations attempts to bring in cheap labor.
 In all his years in Alaska and the Yukon, Ashby says: T only worked for wages four summers prospected the rest of the time" Referring to an old friend of his, Salt Water Jack" Charles, now hale and hearty at 82, he says: Jack and I probably packed more around Alaska than any other two