A PLATINUM RUSH

Grey River Argus, 15 December 1937, Page 12

A PLATINUM RUSH

STRIKES ALASKA. Alaska, America’s last frontier, started a platinum and gold stampede on the cold and foggy shores of Bering Sea last winter and it is still gaining momentum, says an Alaskan correspondent of the “New York Times.” Every arriving aeroplane, ooat, or kayak brings miners, geologists, promoters, surveyors, drillers, and forehanded business men—but as yet no tourists.

Ships find at Goodnews Bay the only harbour on the Bering Sea coast. Planes on pontoons land on the bay and at high tide taxi up to the door of the trading post. Wheel planes usually land up the sandy spit to stop a little short of the roadhouse door.

Eskimos stand around, wondereyed, as heavy machinery is being unloaded from the planes and ships for the mines. They see it and loads of fuel oil dragged across the tundra oy caterpillar tractors. Stampede it is—but in the modern sense. Planes replace dog teams to a large extent; power drilling is used in place of back-breaking* pick and shovel prospecting. Whereas in the 1898 gold rush messages, if any, were sent by native runners, there is now a radio-phone connection between the village of Platinum and the various camps, which has all the privacy of an old-fashioned country telephone line.

Another change that has come about in a generation is represented by the fact that two prospectors in the Togiak country are women. Other white women in the entire Goodnews Bay area of several hundred square miles do not yet number a dozen. Last winter Mrs. Ed. Harwood, wife of the trader at Platinum, was the only white woman in the region. At present Dr. Gerald Fitzgerald and Dr. J. B. Mertie, of the Geological Survey, are mapping and studying the area. There are many blamr spaces on Alaskan maps yet where no surveys have been run. Surveyorgeologists are welcome in any mining or prospector’s camp, because 1 maps mean a great deal to mining men.

Tomcod Charlie Thoresan and an. Eskimo, Henry Oiyah, staked the first platinum claims on Red Mountain ten years ago, but the ground did not lend itself to hand mining. Four years ago Ed and Andy Olson, brothers from Iditarod, Alaska, investigated, obtained ground, set up a camp, and moved in a dragline placer outfit on the slopes of Red Mountain. They have been operating successfully I ever since. In fact, indications are | so good that they had little difficulty in securing an R.F.C. loan of more than half a million dollars to install a huge dredge. On Red Mountain David Strandberg moved in anothei dragline, and has been operating with profit. These two placer’ mines are said to be the only mines in North America that yield only platinum. Platinum in other places is produced as a byproduct.