Old Circle City cabin in the spring of 2014 Circle is a small, predominantly Athabascan community at the end of the Steese Highway 160 miles northeast of Fairbanks. Located on the Yukon River’s south...
Dredge buckets sinking into muskeg along Nome Creek The footprint left by mining on the Nome Creek Basin north of Fairbanks appears minimal at first glance. It’s obvious that the creek has been worked,...
Drove up to Circle on Friday looking for historic sites. Two of the places I stopped at were Deadwood Cemetery just outside Central, and the Pioneer Cemetery at Circle. Both contain graves dating back...
Old freighter’s cabin at Talkeetna in 2005 Gold was discovered at Valdez Creek (near the headwaters of the Susitna River) in 1903. The first pack-horse and winter sled routes that supplied the mining...
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...
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....
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,...
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...
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...
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...
