TREADWELL GOLD MINE

John Treadwell, Owner

John Treadwell a carpenter and builder by trade. Treadwell was said to have had twelve years of experience in both placer and lode mines in California and Nevada before he came to Alaska. In the summer of 1881 he was in charge of the construction of a home at San Francisco for John D. Fry, a banker, when news of the gold strike on Gastineau Channel reached the city. Fry and others paid Treadwell's expenses on a trip to look over the prospects Treadwell's name first appears in the Juneau records on September 13, 1881, when he purchased from Pierre Joseph Erussard the Paris lode claim on Douglas Island. A week later Treadwell formed a partnership with Erussard, D.P. Mitchell and Dave Martin, called the San Francisco Company, and staked four gulch placers on Ground Hog Gulch. A few days later Treadwell and Mitchell staked two more placer claims in the same area. He evidently intended to work the placers as he built a house on the trail below Silver Bow Basin, but for some reason the plans changed. ln October he sold the house to Charles Wells for $200 and thereafter devoted his attention to the Douglas Island property.

Early in December Treadwell purchased two more lode claims on the island from D.W. Clark who had bought them from Edmund Bean and Solomon Mathews. He took twenty two sacks of samples from the three claims and went to San Francisco for a mill test which turned out well. On December 27 the Alaska Mill & Mining Company was organized and five California mining men bought $10,000 worth of stock in it. They were James Freeborn, John D. Fry, E.M, H. H. Shin and H. L. Hill. With the money Treadwell purchased a five stamp mill and other equipment which he brought north in May 1882. He began running a tunnel and set up the mill and before long he realized that the vein was much wider than he had originally believed. He bought a number of adjoining claims returned to San Francisco and persuaded his stockholders that a larger mill should be built. His original five stamp mill was eventually taken across the channel and set up on Gold Creek. It became the first mill of what was to be the Alaska Juneau Mining Company which because of the early history of the mill was sometimes known as the Little Treadwell

Treadwell hired N.A. Fuller first as assayer and then as assistant superintendent of his Alaska Mill & Mining Company. In later years Fuller described Treadwell as a very likeable man. He never drank or smoked which was unusual in Alaska.

In 1889 Treadwell sold his Interest in the Treadwell properties to D. O. Mills of New York for a reported $1,500,000 and returned to California. He and Fuller seem to have had some interest in a coal property in western Alaska perhaps on Kachemak Bay but nothing came of it. Treadwell became associated with his brother James who had been in Alaska and one of the principals in what was known as the Bear's Nest Swindle. They started a trust company and some years later this went broke taking all of John Treadwell's money and more. In 1914 he filed a voluntary petition of bankruptcy in New York City listing liabilities of $2,931,000 and no assets. He continued to live in New York and died in a hotel there on November 6 1927 at the age of 85.

The above material was copied from the book "The Founding of Juneau by R.N. De Armond"

John was born in St. Andrews, Charlotte County, New Brunswick, Canada in about 1846. His parents were John Treadwell (the builder of the Treadwell Inn) and Anna Tufts of St. Andrews. His Grandparents were Reuben and Alphina Treadwell, both also of St. Andrews. He was married to Freda or Frederida J. Graner, daughter of Charles and Frederika Tobener Graner. They had one son, Edward C. who was born in California in about 1876. Edward C. married Bessie M. ______, and they had at least one daughter Vera Belle born about 1901 in California. Edward died on 14 January 1913 in a snowslide at the Bonanza King Mine, Trinity, California.

John's great grandparents were Ephraim and Miriam Treadwell (she was a Treadwell also, his 2nd cousin). They were Loyalists from Fairfield, Connecticut. At the height of the Revolution, Ephraim and his son Matthew went to Danbury to fight for the British and Matthew was killed. In that Miriam had not heard from Ephraim and the state was taking the farm, she went to the British lines and carried the flag. Somehow she got to Long Island with the children where Ephraim was. While there, their home was attacked and some cord wood and Ephraim's boat were burned. With the family altogether on Long Island they joined with other Loyalists on the "Spring Sailing of 1783" to St. John, New Brunswick where they were promised lands for supporting the King.. The rest of their families in the U.S. fully supported the colonists in the Revolution. When Miriam's father died she was not mentioned in his will, so I feel there must have been a break in their relationship over their Loyalist stance and leaving this country. I am glad the family returned 100 years later, because that is why I am here.

Treadwell Mine Stock Certificate

The following was sent to me from a Anchorage Alaska Newspaper and is quoted in part:

The following is the family story which was handed down regarding Albert Aris and the flooding of a gold mine in Alaska. Albert and his wife Elizabeth lived in Douglas, Alaska for a time. This is where their daughter, Alice Aris was born. While in Alaska, Albert worked running the lift in a gold mine. The mine was being tunneled under water in the Bering Strait. Russian engineers warned that the tunnel was too far out under water. The mine flooded. They managed to get all the miners out using the lift, except for one man. They believe that he had been napping in one of the side tunnels. All the mules that were being used in the mine were lost. Several of their bodies floated to the surface days later. After all this, Albert moved his family to Seattle, Washington.

The Treadwell Mine and its Flooding

Based on the above family story, we were able to find out a great deal about the mine that Albert Aris worked in and the story of its flooding. Treadwell was the site of a gold mine about one mile from Douglas, Alaska on Douglas Island across the Gastineau Strait from Juneau, Alaska. The towns of Treadwell and Douglas only existed to service the mine. In their heyday, they had a population greater than Juneau's. The Treadwell mine was the largest gold mine in the world in its time. It remains Alaska's second largest gold mine of all time. Some 3 million ounces (100 tons) of gold were taken out of the Treadwell mine from 1881 to 1917. The four individual mines which made up the Treadwell complex employed 2,000 people in its heyday.

The Treadwell mine was very technically advanced for its day. The techniques of deep (the Treadwell extended down to 2,400 feet below the surface) gold mining developed at Treadwell were later used in South Africa's deep gold mines. Also advanced for its time was the Treadwell mines' employee benefits. Wages for the miners were high for the time, averaging around $3.25 to $3.50 per 8 hour shift while Albert was there. These wages worked out to be an average of $100 per month. Employees could participate in a stock purchase plan which were not yet common. Medical care was paid for by the mining companies and could be obtained from any doctor. This was unusual at the time because most company-paid health plans required the employee to go to the company's own doctors or hospitals. Cottages (complete with electric lights, steam heat, and indoor plumbing) were provided in Treadwell for married families at $25 per month. Albert, Elizabeth, and Alice probably lived in one of these cottages.

Employment in the mine automatically qualified a worker for membership in the Treadwell Club. This was a social club sponsored by the mine and it included a marble-lined swimming pool, gymnasium, dance hall, 500 seat theater, billiards room, howling alley, library, sauna, and Turkish baths. It was basically the only form of entertainment in Treadwell. Treadwell was "dry" but neighboring Douglas had drinking establishments.

From the sounds of it, life in Treadwell was probably pretty good for the Aris family. Good wages, social activities, subsidized housing and health care made the Treadwell mine a good place to work and raise a family. Albert Aris states on his naturalization papers that he came to Alaska in 1910 and was living in Treadwell in 1914. Daughter Alice was born in Douglas in 1912 so it can be assumed that Albert worked at the mine from at least 1912 onwards. By 1918, Albert Aris is listed in a Seattle city directory, so it can be assumed that he and his family had left Treadwell by then.

Albert's naturalization papers have his occupation listed as a hoist engineer. In mining terms, the hoist is the machine used to raise and lower the cage in a mineshaft. The cage is essentially the mine elevator, lifting men and ore up and down the shaft.

The Treadwell mine was running out of gold ore in 1916 and 1917. In response to the leaner mining conditions, the mine began a practice of "pillar robbing". As the miners originally tunneled into the mine, they left behind pillars of un-mined ore to help support the roof of the mine. Pillar robbing removed these pillars to process the ore in them. These pillars were not replaced with wood or metal support beams when they were removed. This started to cause minor cave-ins and cracks started appearing in the mine as a result. By April 21, 1917, the mine was ready to give way. A huge sinkhole appeared on the surface above the mine and swallowed the marble-lined swimming pool of the Treadwell club. This sinkhole was unfortunately below the high tide line on the shore of the Gastineau Strait. As the tide began coming in, the sinkhole let the seawater in from above into the mine and the mine began flooding. The mine was evacuated and all the miners and their families could do was watch as the sea flooded their livelihood. The story of a single fatality due to the flood was originally circulated when one of the miners could not be accounted for from the shift which evacuated the mine. This miner was, however, later seen in Douglas after the flood and it was generally agreed that he used the flood as cover to skip town due to marital difficulties. A dozen horses and one mule (which hadn't seen the light of day for five years) were lost deep in the mine to the flood.

After the flooding, Treadwell basically turned into a ghost town and is no longer found on modern maps. Although one of the four separate mines at Treadwell continued to function (it had been saved from flooding by a concrete bulkhead which separated it from the rest of the mines and continued to employee 500 men), it too finally closed in 1922. The flood, and Americas' entrance into the First World War, basically emptied Treadwell as men searched for work elsewhere.

It is interesting to note how accurate the handed-down family story was regarding this historical event. It was in error in that there were, in fact, no fatalities other than the draft animals. The family story located the position of the mine near the Bering Strait, which is incorrect, and mentions Russian mining engineers. While there was a mining engineer investigating the Treadwell mine's cave-ins and cracks at the time of the flooding, he was not Russian. Furthermore, the mine did not flood because it was tunneling out under the water, but rather because it caved in at the surface below sea level which allowed the rising tide to flood the mine.

The flooding of the Treadwell in 1917 certainly explains why Albert and his family were back in Seattle by 1918.

Sources: "Hard Rock Gold" by David & Brenda Stone, Vanguard Press, 1987 & "History of the Mines & Miners in the Juneau Gold Belt" by Earl Redman, 1988.

Monday, June 1S, 1998

Miners' Ditch key to transit land trail
By DIRK MILLER, The Associated Press

JUNEAU - A ditch dug by miners more than a century ago on Douglas Island has gained new life as the main link in a hiking trail running nearly the length of the island. The Treadwell Ditch, about a 5-foot-wide trench covering almost 16 miles, originally was built in 1889 to collect water to power mines on Douglas Island.

Today the mines are gone, but the ditch has been revived as part of a plan to connect several established paths to form a 26.5-mile hiking trail going from one section of Douglas Island to its northwest shore. Douglas sits across Gastineau Channel from Juneau, one of the many islands in Southeast Alaska's Inside Passage. Trail Mix, a nonprofit organization formed to take care of Juneau's paths, is working to rehabilitate and connect existing paths to form the Douglas Island Trail System, which could be used by hikers, bikers and cross-country skiers. "You look at a map, you've got essentially all the trails in place," said Bill Chisham, Trail Mix's, President. "We've always realized that one of things in Juneau is you don't have enough loop trails." The Treadwell Ditch still runs along the side of much of the proposed trail. The ditch was dug to collect rain, snowmelt and several streams along the way to capture enough water to power the big mining operations of Douglas Island. Most of the mines were shut down in 1917 when they were flooded by seawater after a tremendous cave-in. Construction of the ditch began almost a decade before the Klondike Gold Rush lured thousands of would-be miners to Alaska and the Yukon. Early photos of the ditch in the Alaska Historical Library depict a well-tended operation. One photo shows ditch workers standing above a spillway that funneled water from Fish Creek into the ditch. Another shows a cabin for ditch tenders and a small dam along the route. One of the ditch-tender cabins still stands today. High above a modern subdivision, the century-old cabin stands out amid devils club and skunk cabbage. The walls are hewn out of logs and the second story floor is falling through, but the cabin is in fair shape and could hold up for another century. The trail, though, is suffering. Time has taken out some of the dams and bridges along the way. In several places, hikers have to walk on rotting hoards covering the ditch itself or hike around obstructions. Bridges at Lawson Creek and a branch of Eagle Creek are out. A ladder that takes hikers up a steep bank is missing several rungs and others are untrustworthy. Wind fallen trees cross the trail in several spots and one section of the ditch has disappeared completely, probably carried off by a landslide. The city estimated in 1993 that it would take from $600,000 to $900,000 to fix up the Treadwell trail. But the idea was popular with residents who participated in trail planning back then, attracting the most support of dozens of projects. Chisham said because the Treadwell has historic value and because it is adjacent to the Douglas and North Douglas highways, it could qualify for federal funds. "It's an alternative route to get to town," Chisham said. "Obviously, we want to maintain the history, but at the same time make it more usable." To bring attention to the trail, Trail Mix ran three days of hikes covering the entire route earlier this month. The group also distributes maps outlining the trail and has erected small signs with the acronym DITS, which stands for Douglas Island Trail System. The trail system starts out on another popular hiking trail that leads up a mountain, but it quickly meets up with the Treadwell Ditch trail. For the next 16 or so miles, the trail follows the ditch, crossing alpine meadows and hugging the sides of steep hills and mountains. The ditch trail runs out at Eaglecrest, a city-owned ski area. A couple miles down the road, hikers follow another trail that runs along a creek and eventually makes its way to tidewater. From here, the Douglas trail system follows a paved highway for about two miles to another path that circles around the outer point of the island.

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