Coming into the Country (30 page)
Read Coming into the Country Online
Authors: John McPhee
Gold can be taken from such veins with dynamite blasts, pneumatic drills. But that requires the funds and efforts of a large corporation. The deepest mine in the Western Hemisphereâthe Homestake gold mine, in Lead, South Dakotaâgoes down into the earth more than a mile and a half. Its capital cost to date has been upward of a billion dollars. Alaskan lone minersâpeople who have, or who have had, names like Pete the Pig, Pistolgrip Jim, Groundsluice Bill, Coolgardie Smith, Codfish Tom, Doc La Booze, the Evaporated Kid, Fisty McDonald, John the Baptist, Cheeseham Sam, The Man with the Big Nuggetâprefer to wait for God to break open the rock, to lift up and expose something like the Sierra Nevada and with epochal weathers blast it and spall it and tear it apart until the gold rolls out into the rubble of the streams. Placer miningâseparating gold from stream gravelsâis difficult work, but beside any other method it is comparatively easy.
“Placer,”
in Spanish, means “pleasure.”
“Placer,”
in Spanish, means “pleasure.”
This is the country that Arthur Harper came into in 1873. The journey itselfâtwo thousand miles, a large part of it on scarcely charted Arctic riversâwas an accomplishment in exploration, but to Harper that was incidental. A native of Irelandâintelligent, intenseâhe was a big bull-shouldered man with an H-beam jaw and a look so glazed it correctly suggested a quest. He had spent a lot of time in American goldfields, and he had what the geologist Alfred Hulse Brooks later described
as “a conception of the broader orographic features of the western cordillera.” That is to say, Harper had noticed that the important gold discoveries of North America had occurred in the Western mountains, and that the mountains went a great deal farther north than didâat that timeâthe discoveries. This suggested to him that as the highlands traced their way around the basin of the Yukon River, in Canada and in Alaska, their contributive streams in all likelihood contained undiscovered deposits of gold. Always confident that this was true, he searched with only modest results for upward of twenty years. Elusive stories were already in the air. An itinerant missionary named Robert McDonald, eleven years ahead of Harper, was said to have found a stream in the country where gold was so concentrated he picked it up with a spoon. There was no saying where, except that it was probably a tributary of Birch Creek. The strike in 1880 at what became Juneau was far to the south but was nonetheless encouraging. It was the northernmost discovery in North America to date. Harper tried Birch Creek, the Fortymile, the White, the Stewart, the Tanana, and myriad branching streams. He went to some of the right rivers and looked in all the wrong places. The luck of the Irish he had left at home. He killed and ate game along streams near the mouth of the Tron-diuck, missing the gold below. Here and there, with his pan, he did find enough color to support his conviction. With Leroy Napoleon (Jack) McQuesten, who came into the country by the same route in the same year, he sent back the word that drew prospectors northward in numbers sufficient to favor a find. And soâin a broad orographic wayâhe was the discoverer of the gold of the Yukon.
as “a conception of the broader orographic features of the western cordillera.” That is to say, Harper had noticed that the important gold discoveries of North America had occurred in the Western mountains, and that the mountains went a great deal farther north than didâat that timeâthe discoveries. This suggested to him that as the highlands traced their way around the basin of the Yukon River, in Canada and in Alaska, their contributive streams in all likelihood contained undiscovered deposits of gold. Always confident that this was true, he searched with only modest results for upward of twenty years. Elusive stories were already in the air. An itinerant missionary named Robert McDonald, eleven years ahead of Harper, was said to have found a stream in the country where gold was so concentrated he picked it up with a spoon. There was no saying where, except that it was probably a tributary of Birch Creek. The strike in 1880 at what became Juneau was far to the south but was nonetheless encouraging. It was the northernmost discovery in North America to date. Harper tried Birch Creek, the Fortymile, the White, the Stewart, the Tanana, and myriad branching streams. He went to some of the right rivers and looked in all the wrong places. The luck of the Irish he had left at home. He killed and ate game along streams near the mouth of the Tron-diuck, missing the gold below. Here and there, with his pan, he did find enough color to support his conviction. With Leroy Napoleon (Jack) McQuesten, who came into the country by the same route in the same year, he sent back the word that drew prospectors northward in numbers sufficient to favor a find. And soâin a broad orographic wayâhe was the discoverer of the gold of the Yukon.
McQuesten, from Maine, was no less a believer than Harper, but it was McQuesten's way to support the search rather than pursue it. He took furs downriver and returned with goods. Representing the Alaska Commercial Company, he set up trading postsâfor example, Fort Reliance (1874), forty miles up the Yukon from what came to be known as the Fortymile
River. The posts were served by stern-wheeled steamers arriving from the Bering Sea. McQuesten grubstaked prospectors âin many cases, for penniless year after penniless yearâwith a generosity that would have bordered on charity were it not for his merchant's instinct that when the dust at last came out of the streams it would settle in the merchant's safe. The first major strike in the region was made on the Fortymile in 1886, when prospectors named Harry Madison and Howard Franklin âacting on suggestions made by Harperâwent twenty-five miles up the river, dug to bedrock, and found coarse gold. Just before freeze-up, they emerged with the news. After volunteering to relay it to the outside world, an Alaska Commercial Company river pilot named George Williams made an overland trip and raced the coming winter. He almost survived the trip. Of exhaustion and cold, he died like Pheidippides delivering his message. McQuesten, who was in San Francisco buying supplies, bought more supplies. He need hardly bother to help spread the word. Along the two thousand miles of the Yukon, a dozen whites had lived before. They would now be coming in many hundreds, and soon in many thousands. Harper and McQuesten had spent thirteen years preparing the wayâdeveloping transportation, gathering detailed geographical and geological information. Needless to say, they readily established a trading center where the Fortymile goes into the Yukon. Shovels and flour, picks and pans were for sale there. Advice was plentiful and free.
River. The posts were served by stern-wheeled steamers arriving from the Bering Sea. McQuesten grubstaked prospectors âin many cases, for penniless year after penniless yearâwith a generosity that would have bordered on charity were it not for his merchant's instinct that when the dust at last came out of the streams it would settle in the merchant's safe. The first major strike in the region was made on the Fortymile in 1886, when prospectors named Harry Madison and Howard Franklin âacting on suggestions made by Harperâwent twenty-five miles up the river, dug to bedrock, and found coarse gold. Just before freeze-up, they emerged with the news. After volunteering to relay it to the outside world, an Alaska Commercial Company river pilot named George Williams made an overland trip and raced the coming winter. He almost survived the trip. Of exhaustion and cold, he died like Pheidippides delivering his message. McQuesten, who was in San Francisco buying supplies, bought more supplies. He need hardly bother to help spread the word. Along the two thousand miles of the Yukon, a dozen whites had lived before. They would now be coming in many hundreds, and soon in many thousands. Harper and McQuesten had spent thirteen years preparing the wayâdeveloping transportation, gathering detailed geographical and geological information. Needless to say, they readily established a trading center where the Fortymile goes into the Yukon. Shovels and flour, picks and pans were for sale there. Advice was plentiful and free.
For seven years, the Fortymileâyielding as much as eight hundred thousand dollars in a seasonâwas the focus of attraction in the mining of Yukon gold. The drainage was almost wholly in Alaska but ran a few miles into Canadaâdissecting a high plateau immediately to the south of what is now Eagle. In 1893, excitement shifted to a relatively distant part of the country. McQuesten grubstaked two prospectors named Pitka and Syroska, sending them downriver and into the hills to have another look for the Reverend Mr. McDonald's legendary
spoonfuls of gold. Pitka and Syroska made their strike at a fork of small streams some fifty miles from the Yukon, in a world of mica schists and quartz intrusions, of sharp-peaked ridges, dendritic drainages, steep-walled valleys, flat spurs, and high, isolated mountains locally known as domes. While find followed find, small brooks acquired their ultimately storied namesâMammoth Creek, Mastodon Creekâand since all of them drained into Birch Creek, the area became known as the Birch Creek mining district. Hundreds of miners left the Fortymile to rush to the new discoveries. McQuesten, of course, followed, and built a store. Because miners were so scattered in the hills, McQuesten established his trading post at the river port that supplied them, which had been named Circle City in the mistaken belief that it was onâand not, as it was in fact, fifty miles belowâthe Arctic Circle. Quickly becoming the foremost settlement on the Yukon, it proclaimed itself “the largest log-cabin city in the world.” By 1896, there were ten thousand miners in the district. The resident population of Circle was twelve hundred. Works of Shakespeare were produced in its opera house. It had a several-thousand-volume library, a clinic, a school, churches, music and dance halls, and so many whorehouses they may have outnumbered the saloons. Then certain fresh information came floating down the river from the half-abandoned settlement at the mouth of the Fortymile.
spoonfuls of gold. Pitka and Syroska made their strike at a fork of small streams some fifty miles from the Yukon, in a world of mica schists and quartz intrusions, of sharp-peaked ridges, dendritic drainages, steep-walled valleys, flat spurs, and high, isolated mountains locally known as domes. While find followed find, small brooks acquired their ultimately storied namesâMammoth Creek, Mastodon Creekâand since all of them drained into Birch Creek, the area became known as the Birch Creek mining district. Hundreds of miners left the Fortymile to rush to the new discoveries. McQuesten, of course, followed, and built a store. Because miners were so scattered in the hills, McQuesten established his trading post at the river port that supplied them, which had been named Circle City in the mistaken belief that it was onâand not, as it was in fact, fifty miles belowâthe Arctic Circle. Quickly becoming the foremost settlement on the Yukon, it proclaimed itself “the largest log-cabin city in the world.” By 1896, there were ten thousand miners in the district. The resident population of Circle was twelve hundred. Works of Shakespeare were produced in its opera house. It had a several-thousand-volume library, a clinic, a school, churches, music and dance halls, and so many whorehouses they may have outnumbered the saloons. Then certain fresh information came floating down the river from the half-abandoned settlement at the mouth of the Fortymile.
Two men known for their low credibility had walked into Big Bill McPhee's Caribou Saloon, at Fortymile, and announced a new find upriver. Scarcely an eyelid moved. One of the men, Tagish Charlie, was an Indian. The other was Lying George Carmack. Lying George said they had found pay on a small stream off the Tron-diuck, where a third member of their party, an Indian named Skookum Jim, had remained to guard their claims. The saloon was full of miners. No one was much impressed. For every worthwhile tip that might ever come along there were dozens upon dozens of meretricious leads to
feverish diggings and dismal disappointment. Moreover, Carmack had a reputation for tall tales and short accomplishments. He was also the victim of their prejudice, for he was the white husband of a Tagish squaw. He had gone so native he actually wished to be chief. He encouraged himself with a double dram of whiskey. It mattered a great deal to Carmack that these skeptics believe him. He felt, he said later, as if he had dealt himself “a royal flush in the game of life.” He and his companions had staked all the ground the law allowed them, and now he earnestly sought the respect that might come to him if he made these beggars rich. He finished his whiskey, and he took a used rifle cartridge from his pocket and turned it upside down. Gold is characteristic of the stream it comes fromâthe shape of the nugget, the rustlike shadings of the flake. Flat, rough, oblong, tear-shaped, round, smoothâbits of gold are the consistent signatures of the source placer. An experienced miner can look at a nugget and name the stream. A crowd drew in around Carmack's gold. Only a small amount was there, but no miner in the saloon had seen its like before. They fell silent. The surveyor William Ogilvie, who was working out of Fortymile at the time, made the quiet observation that, in effect, the gold could not have fallen from the sky. Faking nonchalance, miners melted away. The claims of George Washington Carmack, Skookum Jim, and Tagish Charlie were recorded, and soon the stream where they had staked them was named Bonanza Creek. It is the richest placer stream that has ever been found in the world. The discovery claim was ten miles above the Tron-diuckâan Athapaskan phrase meaning “hammer water.” (Fish traps made of stakes had been driven into its bed.) Tron-diuck, alchemized into English, became Klondike.
feverish diggings and dismal disappointment. Moreover, Carmack had a reputation for tall tales and short accomplishments. He was also the victim of their prejudice, for he was the white husband of a Tagish squaw. He had gone so native he actually wished to be chief. He encouraged himself with a double dram of whiskey. It mattered a great deal to Carmack that these skeptics believe him. He felt, he said later, as if he had dealt himself “a royal flush in the game of life.” He and his companions had staked all the ground the law allowed them, and now he earnestly sought the respect that might come to him if he made these beggars rich. He finished his whiskey, and he took a used rifle cartridge from his pocket and turned it upside down. Gold is characteristic of the stream it comes fromâthe shape of the nugget, the rustlike shadings of the flake. Flat, rough, oblong, tear-shaped, round, smoothâbits of gold are the consistent signatures of the source placer. An experienced miner can look at a nugget and name the stream. A crowd drew in around Carmack's gold. Only a small amount was there, but no miner in the saloon had seen its like before. They fell silent. The surveyor William Ogilvie, who was working out of Fortymile at the time, made the quiet observation that, in effect, the gold could not have fallen from the sky. Faking nonchalance, miners melted away. The claims of George Washington Carmack, Skookum Jim, and Tagish Charlie were recorded, and soon the stream where they had staked them was named Bonanza Creek. It is the richest placer stream that has ever been found in the world. The discovery claim was ten miles above the Tron-diuckâan Athapaskan phrase meaning “hammer water.” (Fish traps made of stakes had been driven into its bed.) Tron-diuck, alchemized into English, became Klondike.
I cannot resist a digression into the fate of Big Bill McPhee, who was apparently generous with his cache in a way that any number of his clansmen are not. One person who asked for his help after Carmack's visit to the saloon was Clarence Berry, a
young man from California who was eager to stake his own claims and who had all the determination and physical strength required in a miner but had come to Fortymile with no money, no food, no supplies of any kind. McPhee told Berry to go out to the cache and take whatever he needed. Berry's claims, as things proved out, were among the richest on Bonanza Creek, and they led to the development of a widespread mining conglomerate and, later, to added fortunes in California oil. Big Bill, for his part, settled in Fairbanks. One day his home and saloon there burned to the ground, destroying all of his assets in the world. Berry, in California, heard of this through his company and at once sent a message north: Rebuild, restock, restore everything; have all accounts sent to me.
young man from California who was eager to stake his own claims and who had all the determination and physical strength required in a miner but had come to Fortymile with no money, no food, no supplies of any kind. McPhee told Berry to go out to the cache and take whatever he needed. Berry's claims, as things proved out, were among the richest on Bonanza Creek, and they led to the development of a widespread mining conglomerate and, later, to added fortunes in California oil. Big Bill, for his part, settled in Fairbanks. One day his home and saloon there burned to the ground, destroying all of his assets in the world. Berry, in California, heard of this through his company and at once sent a message north: Rebuild, restock, restore everything; have all accounts sent to me.
The fact that a hundred and fifty million dollars was awash in the drainages of the Klondike diminished but did not extinguish the goldfields of the Alaskan Yukon. Circle City declined by eighty per cent but did not ghost out. Enough miners remained in the Birch Creek district to remove half a million dollars' worth of gold in the season after the Klondike strike. The Fortymile region was drained of talent, but not necessarily of the best talent. Established miners continued to work its streams. For the majority, certainly, the years around the turn of the century were ones of rushing to and fro, impelled by the brightness of news. Miners of the Alaskan gold country went into the Klondike with the advantages of propinquity and experience over the green multitudes coming up from the United States, most of whom found every stream that showed any color completely staked. The Klondike was in Canada. Ninety per cent of the miners were American. The Crown imposed a heavy tax on wealth drawn from Her Majesty's placers. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, understaffed and apprehensive, sent a letter to Ottawa setting forth the possibility that the Americans might by force attempt to move the international boundary far enough east to comprehend the Klondike. But, without violence, many of them just went quietly
“home,” crossing the line to Alaska, to settle in placesâand to work streamsâthat often flaunted remarkably patriotic names: Eagle, Star City, Nation, American Creek, Washington Creek, Fourth of July Creek. In 1900 came the rush to the beaches of Nome. Eight thousand left Dawson, the instant city where the Klondike meets the Yukon, and conspicuous among them all was Ed Jesson, who came walking into Eagle carrying a bicycle. Riding down the frozen river, he had thirteen hundred more miles to go, but for the time being he was going nowhere; his bearings were cold and stiff. When the temperature went up enough, he rode away. Meanwhile, someone else on his way to Nome went by on ice skates. Populations halved in Eagle and Circle, but, as before, miners by no means disappeared from the country. Nor have they ever. Birch Creek and the Fortymile, where the Yukon mining began, have always since discovery had miners on their creeks.
“home,” crossing the line to Alaska, to settle in placesâand to work streamsâthat often flaunted remarkably patriotic names: Eagle, Star City, Nation, American Creek, Washington Creek, Fourth of July Creek. In 1900 came the rush to the beaches of Nome. Eight thousand left Dawson, the instant city where the Klondike meets the Yukon, and conspicuous among them all was Ed Jesson, who came walking into Eagle carrying a bicycle. Riding down the frozen river, he had thirteen hundred more miles to go, but for the time being he was going nowhere; his bearings were cold and stiff. When the temperature went up enough, he rode away. Meanwhile, someone else on his way to Nome went by on ice skates. Populations halved in Eagle and Circle, but, as before, miners by no means disappeared from the country. Nor have they ever. Birch Creek and the Fortymile, where the Yukon mining began, have always since discovery had miners on their creeks.
The principal technique of placer mining is to wash gravel through a long, narrow sluice box, its bottom ribbed with partitions that simulate the riffles of a stream. Gold and heavy sands settle among the riffles, while stones and boulders move on through the box and out the far end as “tailings.” The pioneers, with their picks and shovels, could move about five cubic yards of gravel a day. Before long, these individual prospector-miners were outdone by small groups who could collectively move more stoneâfor example, with mechanical scrapersâand who could greatly increase available water by building elaborate wooden flumes. Giant, high-pressure hoses were developed as well, with dug reservoirs feeding mountainside ditches from which water would fall through pipe to emerge from nozzles with power enough to excavate gravels to bedrock. Inevitably, big dredges were built, tooâby companies that bought up claims and worked entire streams. The dredges floated on ponds of their own making and on capital from cities months away.
Notwithstanding all this, the individual miner persevered.
Quite apart from the major strikes, a kind of life had been discovered that to someâto Axel Johnson, for exampleâwas no less alluring than the gold. Johnson was a Swedish fisherman who came into the country in 1898 and built a cabin, dug a garden at the falls of the Seventymile River. He worked Big Granite Creek, Alder Creek. He “sniped” a lot of his goldâjust took it from likely spots without settling down to the formalities of a claim. He would go to the deep holes of stream rapids and periodically clean them out with a large instrument that resembled a spoon. Or he might take, say, eighteen hundred dollars out of a little bench of gravel, working it by hand. When he came into Eagle for mail and supplies, he sniped as he travelled, and once picked up sixty-seven ounces on the way. He trapped; and below his falls he caught Arctic grayling in such quantities that he had enough to dry and keep for winter. He lived well. He died in his cabin, in 1933. The life that attracted him, with its great liabilities and its great possibilities, has gone right on attracting others, and has been enhanced occasionally by a fresh sense of boom. There have, in fact, been three boom eras in the gold streams of Alaska. The second came in the nineteen-thirties, when the price of gold doubled. During the rushes of the eighteen-nineties, the price had been about seventeen dollars an ounceâa figure that remained essentially steady until 1934, when the government raised it to thirty-five. Lonely miners out on the creeks were suddenly less lonely. Fresh activity was encouraged as well by the almost simultaneous advent of the bulldozer, which could push around roughly four hundred times as much gravel per day as an old-timer with a pick and a shovel. The third Alaskan gold boom began in the early nineteen-seventies, when the United States allowed the price to float with the world market and announced that American citizens, for the first time in forty years, would be allowed to buy gold and save it. The price giddied. It approached two hundred dollars an ounce. Then it settled back to present levelsâaround a hundred and fifty.
Quite apart from the major strikes, a kind of life had been discovered that to someâto Axel Johnson, for exampleâwas no less alluring than the gold. Johnson was a Swedish fisherman who came into the country in 1898 and built a cabin, dug a garden at the falls of the Seventymile River. He worked Big Granite Creek, Alder Creek. He “sniped” a lot of his goldâjust took it from likely spots without settling down to the formalities of a claim. He would go to the deep holes of stream rapids and periodically clean them out with a large instrument that resembled a spoon. Or he might take, say, eighteen hundred dollars out of a little bench of gravel, working it by hand. When he came into Eagle for mail and supplies, he sniped as he travelled, and once picked up sixty-seven ounces on the way. He trapped; and below his falls he caught Arctic grayling in such quantities that he had enough to dry and keep for winter. He lived well. He died in his cabin, in 1933. The life that attracted him, with its great liabilities and its great possibilities, has gone right on attracting others, and has been enhanced occasionally by a fresh sense of boom. There have, in fact, been three boom eras in the gold streams of Alaska. The second came in the nineteen-thirties, when the price of gold doubled. During the rushes of the eighteen-nineties, the price had been about seventeen dollars an ounceâa figure that remained essentially steady until 1934, when the government raised it to thirty-five. Lonely miners out on the creeks were suddenly less lonely. Fresh activity was encouraged as well by the almost simultaneous advent of the bulldozer, which could push around roughly four hundred times as much gravel per day as an old-timer with a pick and a shovel. The third Alaskan gold boom began in the early nineteen-seventies, when the United States allowed the price to float with the world market and announced that American citizens, for the first time in forty years, would be allowed to buy gold and save it. The price giddied. It approached two hundred dollars an ounce. Then it settled back to present levelsâaround a hundred and fifty.
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