Eagle City Hall reflects city’s pioneer days
The City of Eagle sits beside the Yukon River six miles west of the Canadian border. It was established by disappointed miners returning from the Klondike, but mining is only part of the area’s...
Category: gold mining
Remote Sourdough Creek mining camp offered modern conveniences in 1930s
Sourdough Creek flows south out of the White Mountains and empties into the Chatanika River at about 66 Mile Steese Highway. Several miles upstream, along Sourdough Creek Road, lies the old Zimmerman/Carlson mining camp....
Nordale Adit at Homestake mine a remnant of Fairbanks hard-rock mining
Before the development of Fort Knox gold mine northeast of Fairbanks, it’s likely that most people had only heard about the Fairbanks area’s placer gold production. The early drift mines and later dredges that...
Ester Gold Camp a reminder of the town’s heyday
The Ester Gold Camp hotel, constructed in the 1930s, was originally a mess hall-bunkhouse for the Fairbanks Exploration Company. The structure is at the center of Ester Camp Historic District, located in Ester,...
Samppi Mine near Chatanika typical of old drift mines that dot Interior Alaska
The giant dredges scattered along the creeks around Fairbanks are testament to the decades when dredging dominated local gold production, just as the headframes and mill buildings in the hills are reminders of hard-rock...
Old steam dragline at Central, Alaska
Here is a photo of an old steam dragline at the Circle Mining District Historical Museum in Central, Alaska. I couldn’t find a manufacturer’s name or model number anywhere. I’m thinking maybe it’s an...
Chatanika schoolhouse, a historic preservation success story
I enjoy tramping through the hills or along back roads, looking for hidden gems — out-of-the-way or forgotten buildings with lots of character. One of those hidden gems is the old Chatanika schoolhouse...
Mining camps merge to form Livengood in 1914
Livengood garage buildings as they looked in about 2000 In the spring of 1914, two Ester miners, Jay Livengood and Nathaniel “Teddy” Hudson, tramped off to the headwaters of the Tolovana River (about 60...
Ester’s assay office: A little building that survived
Ester Assay Office in 1993 Many people are familiar with the hotel and Malemute Saloon at Ester Gold Camp. But how many have paid any attention to the small frame-building on the northeast corner...
Modern Placer Drift Mining – Chatanika Valley, Alaska
When its -40° F. above ground, its only +28° F. underground I had a mining engineer friend who, knowing I was interested in modern mining as well as mining history, invited me...
