Digital Bob Archive

A city of 20,000 on the Taku River at an industrial site just over the Canadian border. That was one of the projections for what was known as the Frobisher project of the 1950's. Iron, steel, nickel, zinc, cobalt and perhaps aluminum would be processed at the site by Ventures, Ltd., an affiliate of Frobisher, Ltd. Electric power to the tune of 4.5 million horsepower would be developed by the Northwest Power Company, a subsidiary of Frobisher. That enormous project would include several dams on the upper Yukon River and some of its tributaries and tunnels to drain Lake Atlin and Sloko Lake into the Taku River system. There would also be dams and power sites at or near the mouths of the Inklin and Nakina Rivers. One result would be that the flow of water in the lower Taku, below the boundary, would be doubled or tripled.

The proposal was not a fantasy. Frobisher put as many as 50 engineers in the Taku Valley making surveys. And it posted a $2.5 million dollar performance bond with British Columbia officials. The project included building a deep water port on Taku Inlet to which raw ores and concentrates would be brought from many parts of the world. From the inlet, the materials would be barged up the river to the smelter site.

The planning seemed to go well until it came to the port. The engineers looked at the glaciers, the winter winds, the silting of the inlet, and they shook their heads. They shook them even harder when they calculated the amount of barge traffic the river would be called upon to carry during the navigation season. Those were only two of the factors, apparently, that caused the project to be abandoned. No doubt there were many sighs of relief in the Juneau area. Completion of the project might well have wiped out the salmon runs. It would certainly have eliminated most of the recreational use of the river.

In the meanwhile, gold mining at the Polaris-Taku on the Tulsequah River had failed to come up to hopes and expectations. The operation which had been reopened in 1946 after the end of World War II closed down in 1950. At the same time deposits of base metals such as copper and zinc were explored by a number of companies. One was the Hudson Bay Mining & Exploration Co. Another was the Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co., Ltd., known as Cominco, which had the Big Bull and Tulsequah Chief properties. In 1951 Cominco leased the Polaris-Taku surface plant for five years, using it to concentrate copper and lead-zinc ores. The concentrates were trucked seven miles to Tulsequah Landing, then barged down the Taku to ships waiting in the inlet. But whether it was a lack of sufficiently good ore, or high costs of operations, the company last operated in 1958.

Today the Taku River still flows free and the salmon still ascend to spawn in the tributaries. The Jeanne and the two Taku Chiefs and their barges are long gone and no commercial vessels now operate there. Talk of a road to Atlin continues as it has for more than 90 years, but it appears only marginally closer to reality. Meanwhile, the Taku River and its valley remain a marvelous scenic and recreation area in Juneau's back yard.