Mining in the Arctic

Fairbanks has always had a boom or bust economy. The very first boom it experienced was Felix Perdo's discovery of gold. The second boom would never have taken place without a very important element - water. Fairbanks has a very dry climate - one of the driest in the world. Winter snow accumulation may be anywhere from 48 to 68 inches of snow, but it is very dry snow. The total annual precipitation rate is 11 to 12 inches. That's not much water.

Mining in the interior was very difficult. Those who staked their claims in streams and creeks were very lucky. But those whose claims were back from water had life a bit more rough. These miners dug down into the earth until they encountered frozen ground. They built a fire to thaw the ground and then dug that out til it was too frozen to dig and built another fire. It was dig and burn, dig and burn, dig and burn all the way down to bedrock or gold bearing gravel which in the Fairbanks area could be anywhere from 120 to 150 feet below the surface.

Once they hit bedrock or gold bearing gravel, they branched off with tunnels, moving in the same manner. This work was all done in the winter when frozen ground made the whole structure more solid, stable and safe. All of the material taken from the shafts and tunnels was hauled above ground and piled up to be washed through during spring melt or early spring rains. This was all back breaking work.

Most of the claims in this area were held by individual miners, not big companies. So when the back breaking labor took them to the end of a gold bearing vein or the pay dirt gave out, the miners quit and moved to easier ground. There are still places in the interior where ground clearing work will come upon a shaft of ice extending deep within the earth where, over the years since that mining, water has seeped into shafts and tunnels and frozen creating permanent reminders of the miners hard life style.

Individual miners held most of the ground in the Fairbanks area from Pedro's first discovery in 1902 until about 1920 when they thought they had all of the easy gold mined out. Miners began to drift away to new gold fields or better money somewhere else as early as 1910, leaving Fairbanks to slowly decline in size and economy - the first bust economy.

The big mining companies operating in the Nome area knew that there was more gold in the interior, but they also knew that there was not enough water to operate the big equipment needed to get it out of the ground. Then in about 1920, a civil engineer named John Davidson came through the interior, looked it over and came up with an idea. He took that idea to the big mine operators up at Nome. They looked it over and said. "John, this will never work. Go back and take another look.We just don't think that this is economically feasible." So John did, and he still thought his idea would work so he went back to Nome with the same proposal and this time convinced them that it would work. They took John's idea to financiers in New York to get the backing to build what is now known as the Davidson Ditch.

The Davidson Ditch was approximately 90 miles long. It took water from the headwaters of the Chatanika River about 28 miles north of Fairbanks, across the hills and valleys to the Gold Stream Valley. The ditch consisted of earth work ditches, tunnels, flumes and pipe with an inside diameter of 52 inches. At the time it was built it was considered one of the major engineering feats of it's time. It was so impressive that before Alyeska Pipeline Corporation built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, they sent engineers to Fairbanks to study the Davidson ditch.Construction of the Davidson Ditch was accomplished without the aid of bulldozers. Digging and earth work was done by diesel and steam shovels, graders, tractors and manual labor. The steam shovels used here were the same ones used to build the Panama Canal and are now on permanent display in Pioneer Park in Fairbanks, Ditches were dug to a dept of four feet using the dig and thaw method except allowing the sun to do the melting. A tunnel one mile long was blasted through rock in a hill near Fox, Alaska. Fifteen inverted siphons were put n place to move water from low points to high points without the use of pumps. The whole system was gravity energy with a maximum flow capacity of 180,000 gallons per day.

Construction of the Davidson Ditch took from 1923 to 1928. Total cost in 1927 was $1,773,841.00. Today that would cost about $92,239,732.00. The construction of this ditch created a second boom for the Fairbanks area.

The damn on the Chatanika that diverted water to the Davidson Ditch was destroyed in the late 1990's - early 2000's. Some portions of the pipe have been removed. The earthwork ditches are mostly gone.

With the arrival of water to the distant dry valley, the big mining companies could now bring in the big mining machinery.   The arrival of the gold dredges would create a bigger boom for the growing community.