Digital Bob Archive

The community of Perseverance existed for something less than twenty years in Silver Bow Basin, at the head of the Gold Creek Valley. The Alaska Perseverance Mining Company established a bunkhouse camp there in 1902 and began to develop several mining claims. The size of the camp increased during the building of the reduction mill in 1906 and some families had moved in by 1907 when the mill went into operation, and the community continued to grow slowly. The Basin voting precinct was established for the 1906 election - the first one in which Alaskans voted for a Delegate in Congress - and 36 ballots were cast there. This increased to 65 two years later.

When the mill was destroyed by fire in December, 1912, it looked for a time as though that might be the end of Perseverance. It wasn't. A new company, the Alaska Gastineau Mining Company, took over the claims, drove a two-mile haulage tunnel through the mountain and built a much larger mill overlooking Gastineau Channel at the mouth of Sheep Creek. A town to house the mill workers was built there and named Thane for the general manager of the mining company. Most of the miners, however, continued to live closer to their work, at Perseverance.

Thane and Perseverance were mainly company towns, with housing owned by the company, but with a few private homes in each. Thane got a post office in 1914; Perseverance never did. People living there got their mail at either Thane or Juneau. In 1915 Thane was reported to have a population of 950; Perseverance had about half that number. But that number did not include a lot of voters; only 99 ballots were cast in the Perseverance precinct, as it had become known, in 1916 and only 39 two years later.

The company buildings - bunkhouses, mess house, recreation building, mine utility structures - were on a shoulder of the mountain, high above the floor of Silver Bow Basin. Most of the private homes or other buildings were on the floor of the basin.

In 1916 the Territory of Alaska built a school house at Perseverance. The building was dedicated on September 29 and school opened a day or two later with Miss Thelma Ninnis, who had grown up on Gastineau Channel and graduated from the Juneau High School. School continued there, with annual enrollment running from 11 to 14, until May, 1921.

While the community of Perseverance was, technically at least, a part of and closely allied with Thane, much of its communication was with Juneau via the Basin Road which was more and more being called the Perseverance Road. The roadway had been considerably improved and according to one mining company official, \"One side of the road rests, for the most part, on piles, and the other side is fastened to the face of the mountain, the whole being crossed and recrossed by stringers.\"

The Alaska Gastineau Mining Company continued for a time to use wagons and teams of four big draft horses on the Basin Road to supply its camp at Perseverance, but by 1915 these were being replaced by heavy duty motor trucks and it became an automobile road.