EPISODE 682 ESCAPE FROM THE YUKON PART 5: THE TREADWELL MINE DISASTER — KILLS 12 HORSES, 1 MULE, MAYBE 1 MAN 1917
alan skeoch
Nov. 20, 2-22
My water taxi was getting ready to dock in Juneau…the land- locked capital of Alaska was a city
stacked like cordwood. Ascending in tiers up a mountain on the east side of the Gatineau Channel.
Juneau was obvious to the naked eye. If so, then The Treadwell Mine must be equally obvious.
I turned and looked westward across the Channel. Douglas Island was there even though it had
moved and reshaped itself back in 1917. But there was no sign that this Island had once housed
the largest gold mine in the world. Here were the ruins of the Treadwell Mine?
Nothing there except one measly little nondescript tiny tower poking out of raw slurry of sand and bits of rubble
I was disappointed. The reason for my ‘ Escaping the Yukon’ plan was to see the fabled ruins of the Treadwell Mine.
There was….there is….nothing to see.
Just getting here had been exciting. Travelling down on the Yukon and White Pass Railway. Imagining the
3,000 bodies of inhumanely treated horses at Dead Horse Gulch, recreating the wild days in Skagway when
bunco artist Soapy Smith ruled the roost, taking a tiny 10 person water taxi down the Gatineau Channel.
All very exciting. But the culminating event, the Treadwell Mine…was not worth the effort. Or so it seemed
at first glance.
“Somewhere under this channel, over 2,000 feet below us are the skeletons of 12 horses and 1 mule and maybe 1 man”
“How do you know that?’
“The largest gold mine in the world in 1917 was here…the Treadwell Mine”
“Tunelled under the Gatineau Channel…5,000 tons of ore a day taken from under the ocean?”
“Miners excavated 65 miles of tunnels.”
“Then it all came to a crashing end in just two hours, April, 1917….”
“And all that remains is this peculiar building. Looks like a tiny Greek Parthenon”
“When Treadwell was in full flower there were buildings stretching for miles.”
“And Douglas Island was a fulll fledged town”
“Now there is just this one building”
“Built on a massive pile of mine tailings that has made the Douglas Island beach where no beach was before.”
The main event….THE TREADWELL MINE DISASTER…Is coming in the next episode.
alan skeoch
Nov. 21,2022
Post script: The Treadwell Mine was really four mines all carved out
of a fault in the skin of our mother earth. A crack that allowed gold
bearing magma to ooze up.
Take a close look at the small cross section map of the Treadwell Mine…top right hand side, small…NOTICE ANYTHING?
