Digital Bob Archive

The Perseverance lode claim on the mountain above Silver Bow Basin was staked and named on June 30, 1885, by C.D. Paine. Soon after that two local men, W.A. Sanders and George W. Garside, became interested in that claim and two adjoining ones, the Alta and the Jumbo. The three became known as the Perseverance group.

Sanders was said to have been a mining engineer, although whether by training or just practical experience is not known. He also was reported to have come to Alaska in 1882 with a group of prospectors and to have been one of only two survivors when their steamboat was wrecked, but that part of his story has not been documented. He did land at Douglas in 1882, about the time John Treadwell was setting up his first small stamp mill. Sanders went to work for Treadwell and remained there until he turned his attention to Sliver Bow Basin.

George Garside came to Juneau in 1884 after he had studied mining engineering at Santa Clara College and worked for five years at the Comstock Mine in Nevada. With his brother, Charles, he did much of the land and mineral surveying in this area during the next two decades.

It was Sanders who took the lead in developing the Perseverance group and he proceeded cautiously. Instead of rushing to build a reduction plant at the first gleam of gold, he imported a string of pack burros in the spring of 1887 and put them to hauling sacked ore samples from Silver Bow Basin for shipment to San Francisco for testing. The burros probably were returned south at the end of the summer; no further mention of them appeared in the Juneau newspapers.

Use of the Silver Bow Basin trail by pack horses, mules and burros evidently resulted in its improvement to the extent that it also began to be used for recreation. Juneau's second paper, The Juneau City Mining Record, commented in July, 1888, that \"the picnic grounds at the bridge on Basin Road is much used, and it noted a month later that Mrs. J.D. Barnes had easily walked to Silver Bow Basin over the trail, carrying her infant daughter.

Further improvements were on the way. The San Francisco mill tests were favorable and the Gold Mountain Mining Company was organized by Sanders and Garside. Then a man named Depue bought an interest and the company was reorganized as the Eastern Alaska Mining & Milling Company, financed by Wisconsin capital. A ten-stamp mill was ordered and in April, 1889, the company put more than 100 men to work extending the Johnson Road to Silver Bow Basin.
That work was finished before the end of May.

The cost to the company, according to The Juneau City Mining Record, was nearly $11,000. Col. W.J. Sutherland, a promoter of the Perseverance property, later claimed the cost had been $65,000, while the book, \"Hard Rock Gold,\" put the figure at $40,000.

Whatever the cost, this seems to have been the first road built in Alaska since Russian days. It was more than four miles long and got multiple use: W.A.
Sanders brought in Juneau's first horse and buggy for use on the road.