Digital Bob Archive

SEPTEMBER 15, 1882-The Webster, Lockwood & Co. stamp mill on Gold Creek has been pounding away since the middle of August, mostly on ore from the Henrietta lode owned by George Pilz, Nat Hilton and others. The ore is carried about a mile from the mine to the mill by Indian packers at 10? a sack. Production has been disappointing as there are insufficient values in the ore to make the mill pay and William Webster is looking for other property to mine.

Over on Douglas Island, John Treadwell has his five-stamp mill set up but has been unable to run it because of lack of water, the water being appropriated by placer miners. Lacking other redress, he has now appealed to the Navy commander at Sitka. It is said that Treadwell?s partners in San Francisco have offered to send up 200 men to drive the placer men off the property, but he has refused this assistance.

Treadwell came here a little over a year ago and acquired some placer ground in the vicinity of Silver Bow Basin. He was a partner with D. P. Mitchell, French Pete Erussard and Dave Martin in four gulch claims on Ground Hog Gulch and with Mitchell he staked some hill claims above the Basin. He also built a log cabin beside the trail. Last fall, he sold all these properties and bought four lode claims on Douglas Island. One is the Paris, the original discovery claim, which he bought from French Pete. The deed names $5 as the price but final consideration is said to be nearer $400. He bought the Bean and Mathews claims, staked by Edmund Bean and Sol Mathews, for a total of $250, and a fourth claim, immediately behind the Paris, for an undisclosed amount. He also brought from Bean the rights to 1,500 inches of water from Hayes Creek, also known as Paris Creek, which flows through the Paris lode. Bean had filed his claim to this water on May 12, 1881.

Treadwell went below and organized the Alaska Mill & Mining Company, of which he has a one-third interest. Others are Messrs. Frye, Freeborn and Hill, well known San Francisco capitalists, and Senator J. P. Jones of Nevada. He brought back with him a five-stamp mill and other machinery including a water wheel for power.

In the meanwhile, six miners, acting in partnership, moved onto Treadwell?s lodes, claiming that they have a right to everything that is loose on top of the ground. In some places this is ten feet deep in rich decomposed quartz. They also appropriated all of the water in Hayes Creek.