Evening Star Newspaper, March 23, 1930, Page 83

Fiction Art PART SEVEN. he Swundiy Stae Magasine WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MARCH 23, 1930. Features 24 PAGES. ] B S ———— ‘Now a New Gold Rush to Alaska News of Pay Dirt Near the Town of Ruby, on the Yukon, Has Started Hordes of Men on the Trail Again—The Old Days of Nome and Fairbanks Are in the Air, as Gold Seekers From the Territory and From Far Down the Pacific Coast Crowd In. BY JOHN L. COONTZ. S Alaska destined to witness an- other gold rush? Are thousands of men des- tined to take the trail again through the passes of its snow- clad mountains and river-gorged val- leys, as they did in 1898-9, lured by the most magic of all nature’s minerals? Gold! Yellow gold, dust or nugget, is it again to sway the life of that most northern outpost of American civiliza- tion? For a new gold strike has been made. A new gold cache of Old Mother Earth’s strike in the Poorman sector of the southern portion of the peninsula, 60 miles south of the aforesaid city of Ruby. Jack Wolfe, old prospector, veteran of many a gold trek through the Alas- made the strike. Work- part, to bear the name of Wolfe Creek, he came upon the precious metal in paying quantities. Quickly the word spread. Before long it had been carried in the ice and cold. Forty, 50, 60 below zero had no terror for them; blizzard, snow demh_. waste intimidated them not. Gold, yellow, glit- tering gold, was their quest; gold was in their eyes; gold, do or die, their cry. HOUGH Spring, now here, had to be await= ed for before claim working could be un- dertaken, the gold-seekers were down in the Poorman quarter by the tens and twentles staking claims. mrneph-dtobeutmd then a flying trip to the nearest United States land office to file on them. In the free-for-all scramble opportunity was his who seized 1t. Six to twenty dollars a pan runs the strike, according to those who have been down and over the lays. And that is mighty good pay dirt—especially at the higher bracket, for that means an ounce of gold at every pan. The pay streak as reported is 60 feet wide, possibly more, and running for a mile or more. Today, at Ruby, the influx of gold-seekers from over Alaska and far down the Pacific Coast is great. The stir in the little city is great. For the ice is going out of the river and the boats are coming in. And with them hordes of men. And across from Fairbanks and Nome others are coming, all hoping to get in on the bonanza for all it is worth. About the little town, frozen in for the most part of the year, the bearded, rough crew is milling. Dogs are being bought for the trail at almost any price. Grub is in high demand and Ruby merchants are laying in a plentiful supply. A restlessness pervades the air; man and beast are straining at the leash. One can't get packed and on the trail soon enough. Every day means loss of time, and loss of time means loss of potential fortune. The old days of Nome and Fairbanks are in the air. Days when gold was panned from the beach of the former city, not hundreds’, nor thousands’, but hundreds of thousands’ and even millions’ worth of it. And Ruby is going like Nome. Nome, to- day, a town of some 3,000 inhabitants, had, in the heyday of its gold rush, 12,000 souls. Ruby, likewise, is witnessing the same motley, non- descript influx. Places of entertainment are springing up like mushrooms; stores to take care of the prospector’s wants. The crook is there and the gentleman; the hobo and the wealthy adventurer. OW long will all_ this stir, this feverish activity last? It all depends—depends on the size of the strike. If gold has been found in rich, paying quantity and its distribution is determined over a great area, there is the possibility of the “rush” lasting as long as did the Nom: or Fairbanks “rush,” or that other great “rush,” one of the greatest in the his- tory of gold—the Klondike one.. Only inten- sive working of the area can determine what the strike will develop into. With the slipping of Spring into Summer, longer and warmer days on the card, the sector will be worked out thoroughly. Men will swarm over it like flies over molasses cake, up and down the ereeks there, looking, sifting, washing, peering into the bottom of their shallow pans, stirring with their fingers the residue of their “wash,” “Sluicing” in the Alaskan gold fields. An individual method of washing out gold. hoping to see the ever-fascinating glitter of the tiny little yellow flakes or nuggets that will spell wealth in their hands. The fact that gold has been discovered in paying quantities around Poorman does not mean that gold has not been known to exist there, or is not already mined there. It has been known to this part of Alaska for many years. In fact, there is scarcely a part of Alaska that has not been gone over by the United States Geological Survey from the stand- point of mineral resources. And if one will look at a geological (Government) survey of the peninsula, bought for a song from Russia, he will find it dotted here and there and every- where with little red crosses. These little crosses mean that gold is “here.” But they do not tell a story beyond this, at least no story of wealth and fortune. They indicate only the presence of gold. They are significant only as regards the question of location. Poorman, therefore, is a gold sector. Which accounts for its being found in paying quanti- ties by grizzled Jack Wolfe. For years he has been searching for it up and down the creek of his name and other creeks in that vicinity emptying into Poorman’s Creek. Beaver Creek is said to be even richer in pay dirt than Wolfe. An “old timer” of the gold fields. "THE story of gold in Alaska fs eme of the most intriguing in the long list of stories built around man’'s eternal search for it, long regarded as the most precious, the most desired of all metals. Gold will not tarnish, it is quite ductile, can be hammered into very thin alloyed sheets and still retain its character, is beautiful to look at and, by virtue of agreement among the civilized nations of the world, accepted as the standard of monetary value by all. It makes charming ornaments, rings, earrings, watches, chains, neck- laces and whatnot. And because of all these things it is most sought after by men. It is found in many parts of the world, but chiefly in mountainous sec- tions, for it is associated with igneous rock, rock produced by heat—earth’s interior heat—and cast up at some re- mote geological time to the surface of the earth. Here erosion does the rest, in so far as flake and nugget gold is concerned. So when gold was first discovered in Alaska, back in the early eighties, men began to turn hopefully to that frozen country in search of rich deposits of it. Placer mining became the order of the day, washing gold out of stream soil where it had been deposited by the stream. However, Alaska as a great gold coun- try did not come into its own until 1898 and 1899, the date of the discov- ery of gold at Nome and the develop- ment of the field. Of this discovery and the subsequent activity that followed it there are many men throughout the country smlllvlngwhpwere,uke!’rhmuthem:o( Troy, a party to it. The terrible hardship and frenzy of that period has not seen a counter- pmtothhdly.msotuutheumtedsum is concerned. It is rivaled only by the “rush” to California in ’49 and to the Klondike fields in Canada. “Stampede,” the word used by those who have been witnesses of a “rush,” is the only word in the English language that de- fines accurately the wild, blind fury of men on the trail. Every form of suffering is there; every form of succor and mercy; every form of brutality; every form of generosity. Men, ac- cording to the bias of their nature, either rise to the spiritual heights or sink to the depths of hell. The “stampede” for gold tears away the veneer of civilization and leaves stark naked man, elemental man fighting it out to the end of the trail with his fellow man, nature and the bright angels of his nature, - GOLD production in Alaska for 1928, was . $6,845,000; for the year 1929, it was esti- mated to be, as of January 1, 1930, $7,748,000. Since 1880 the total output of gold from northern possession is set at $373,000,000, a percentage of return on a paltry investment unequaled in the annals of the world save only in the case of one, that made by Thomas Jefferson while he was President. This coune try gave Russia $7,200,000 for Alaska in 1967. Last year’s gold production alone in the terri- tory would have paid for it. The biggest single gold year in Alaska was 1906 during which year $18,000,000 worth of gold was produced. It was the peak of the Nome fever period. By that year placer min- ing had been replaced largely by machine proc- ess mining, a fact that accounted for the huge total. Men, in speaking of these years at Nome, recall seeing on more than one occasion two, three, four and five million dollars of gold bullion piled on the wharf at Nome awaiting shipment out of its native environment. Today, gold mining in Alaska on a large scale is machine process mining. Dredges are used to lift the soil and handle it through a washing process to the end that it yields up its treasure. One sees little of the mining methods save where the prospector roams and works out by himself ‘'or with his “pard” a claim. Dredges charge 30 cents per yard for their work and there are, in round numbers, 150 pans tp the yard. The present discovery of gold in paying quantities will have a boom effect upon Alaska, declares Dr. Philip Smith of the Alaskan divis- ijon of the Geological Survey at Washington. “It,” said Mr. Smith, “will focus attention upon that distant possession of ours, bringing to the mind of the average American citizen something in the way of knowledge of its un- suspacted beauties and wealth. The airplane and the radio have changed this once almost God-forsaken country, cold, mountainous, rocky. Valleys it has, of course, beautiful as any on earth, with blooming gardens and rich pastures filled with cattle and hogs. “Inaccessible, practically, a few years ago, today it has a railway line reaching from Seward to Fairbanks, a distance of 470 miles, with spurs shooting off in different directions