KLONDIKE TO-DAY

Otago Witness, Issue 2984, 24 May 1911, Page 91

KLONDIKE TO-DAY

A GREAT DREDGING AND SLUICING FIELD. In the last issue of the Windsor Magazine Mr Trumbull White has an, interesting article on the change which has come about in the Klondike—' 'From Bonanza Mining Camp to Colonial Capital in a Single Decade ;"*. from tents to Queen Anne cottages. After describing in graphic terms the Klondike of yesterday, the difficulties of leaching it, and giving in brief the story of the days of "easy money," followed by "the cream" having been skimmed off and the population decreasing, the writer proceeds : But even then the greatest change of all had begun. Ear-sighted men of wealth had considered the situation and concluded that the Klondike had not given up its gold. They knew of the crude and wasteful methods of mining that had been practised, of the shortage of water-supply for exhaustive operations, of the inadequate arrangements for thawing ground on a large scale, of the expensive production of power for operating machinery in small and isolated plants. They knew how many claims had been abandoned because they did not prove quite up to the Bonanza standards of the miners who owned them, and how many others had been half worked and half neglected. Quietly they began to plan for & great renewal of activity in the region, to take out the gold that had been left behind. Through several seasons they were quietly buying up abandoned and neglected claims, not rich enough to hold their owners' attention, claims too high above the creek level to be worked profitably, claims that had been worked over and worn out. Finally, they had so connected the apparently random and filtered purchases and options that fch4|' controlled a body of holdings comprising; practically the whole of\ Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks—the Klondike as the world knew it. How much money had been spent by this organisation before any return waa earned, is hard to determine. The best estimates indicate that at least 20,000,000 dollars were invested in the purchase of claims and the construction of the various operating plants before an ounce of gold was taken from the gravel. The largest single item was the providing of a permanent sufficient water supply for all operations. To accomplish this, a considerable stream, Twelve Mile River, was diverted from its natural course and carried 70 miles by pipe and ditch and inverted syphon to the place where it was needed. Over mountain-tops, across frozen morasses, through ravines and valleys, and finally by a. great bridge across the Klondike River itself, this manmade river floA^s.

_ Near the same source of supply another river was tapped and a "water power created, beside which now stands the most modern of electrical power plants, remote in the mountains, but perfect in every detail, sending its currents to the distant valleys of the Klondike to provide light and force for every need. These two tremendous plants available, the whole face of Nature along the creeks is to be changed. Great dredges are at work, scraping the surface of the earth down to bedrock, mile after "mile, and sluicing out the gold. Gangs of men are working ahead of the dredges, thawing out the ground with batteries of boilers and hollow steel drills injecting superheated steam deep into the vitals of the earth. The hillsides are being denuded and crumbling into the cveek beds below under the force of high-pressure hydraulic attack from hose and nozzles of the heaviest design, only to be hoisted, again into sluice-boxes by the newest of electric elevators. Ranges of hills are shifting back and forth from one side of the creek valleys to the other; the old heaps of tailings are again rolling through the sluices; the Klondike 1 is being worked over again. When one considers the remoteness of the region, the difficulties of climate and physical conditions imposed by Nature, the tremendous yield of gold already produced, and the huge investment required before any return could be assured, or even a very wide range of convincing experiments made, it seems fair to place this enterprise well at the top in the scale, of commercial courage. The detailed story of the Yukon Gold Company, and the group of young men who have planned and executed its operations in the Klondike, is a human document of Surpassing interest, worthy of far greater space than can be given here.

And the result? From the moment of first partial operation of the new system, the output of gold from the district once more began to mount. An increase of 400,000 dollars in production the first year of even partial operation, 1908, and apparently of 1,000,000 dollars the second year, for which the figures are not yet complete, indicates the tendency. Of course, this does not mean that one ccnrpan3 r has a monopoly of the whole of the Klondike. There are other creeks and other districts, and even near Dawson mining continues profitably on a smaller scale by many of the original owners. But the pioneering" has been done, the experiment has been made, and other developments along the same lines, in other parts of the region, may fairly be expected from other capitalists. Indeed, several dredges other than those indicated are already operating with similar success. '

This seems like conservation of natural resources in the highest sense of the phrase —that phrase so stirring nowadays among thinking people. Into a, mining district that, had passed its prime, and was rapidly failing, came a fortunate combination of courage, capital, and skill. Thousands of men were given employment where labour was in its most depressed condition; mi'lions of dollars were paid out in wages: other million® were paid for mining claims whose owners thought

them all but exhausted; the breath of new life was breathed into a city that seemed to be passing; and the outcome is the saving of millions in gold that had been abandoned as inaccessible, or wasted by the crudity of former mining methods. It is true that a great corporation is to reap huge profit in the end; it is true that there are a thousand wage-earners instead of a thousand small miners working their own claims, some -winning, some losing. But the old days of the "poor man's camp" had already passed in the Klondike.