Digital Bob Archive

JANUARY, 1918 - PART 5:

Juneau had been a mining town since 1881, and Douglas and Treadwell since shortly after that, but in 1918 mining on Gastineau Channel was in a decided slump. The decline in mining was due in part to the war that was raging in Europe, but the main cause had been the flooding of three of the four operating mines on Douglas Island. Mining at the Treadwell, the Mexican and the 700 had come to sudden halt on April 22, 1917, leaving only the Ready Bullion as an operating mine. It was the smallest of the four.

The two towns, Douglas and Treadwell, were not evacuated after the mine disaster, but their populations began a steady decline. It is not possible to say how many still lived in each town at the beginning of 1918, but there are some indications in the fact that the population of Douglas dropped from 1722 in 1910 to 919 in 1920, while that of Treadwell went from 1222 in 1910 to 325 in 1920.

And not only did many of the people leave but so did some of the buildings. A number crossed the channel to Juneau, at least one big business building was moved to Ketchikan, and an apartment house, a hotel and a couple of dwellings went to Sitka.

Miners and millmen thrown out of work by the Treadwell disaster had no trouble finding jobs down at Thane at the Alaska Gastineau Mining Company, or at the Alaska Juneau Mining Company at Juneau. Both were short of men, partly because of the military draft, partly because of high wages at shipyards and other defense plants down the coast.

At Thane the payroll averaged 452 in 1918, compared with an average of 712 the previous year. They got out only 1,285,445 tons of ore in 1918; in 1917 it had been 2,240,346 tons. And the gold content of the ore they did get out in 1918 was down slightly: $1.09 instead of the $1.11 of the previous year. In 1917, however, the yield had been 90 cents per ton, with a profit of 13 cents a ton. The dismal part of that picture was that despite increased ore production after the war, the operation remained unprofitable and in 1921 the mine was closed.

The Alaska Juneau Mine was also struggling in 1918. After operating a 30-stamp mill at the site of the original lode claim in the Gold Creek Valley for more than a dozen years, the company had built a 40-stamp pilot mill overlooking Gastineau Channel and just south of downtown Juneau. This mill began to crush ore on March 7, 1914, and ten more stamps were subsequently added.

Then a large ball mill was built adjoining the stamp mill and was finished by March 1917. It was supposed to crush 8000 tons of ore a day but could handle less than half of that. In 1918 the management of the company was struggling to correct the deficiencies of its plant and make the property pay. The payroll that year averaged 217 men and wages averaged $4.58 for an 8-hour day. A total of 592,218 tons of ore was hauled to the two mills in 1918 and $432,749 in gold and silver was recovered from it. It was, however, to be many years before the company got its operations out of the red.