Juneau Mining District

The Juneau mining district is a gold mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska.

In 1880 a local inhabitant, Chief Kowee, revealed to prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris the presence of gold in what is now named Gold Creek in Silver Bow Basin. The city of Juneau was founded there that year.

The strike sparked the Juneau gold rush which resulted in the development of many placer and lode mines including the largest, in their time, gold mines in the world: the Treadwell complex of lode mines on Douglas Island (across a narrow sea channel from Juneau) and the AJ lode mine, in Juneau itself. The steep, wet, timber-covered, seaside mountain setting provided water power, transportation, and lumber such that, "extraordinarily low costs of operation make available low grade ore that under conditions only slightly different would be valueless."

The first claims of what was to become the Treadwell complex were staked in 1881. Mining the Treadwell site began by sluicing residual placers over the lode deposits. Underground mining began with a five-stamp mill operating in 1883. In the mid-1910s, with 960 stamps grinding ore and tunnels reaching as far as 2,400 feet (730 m) below the surface and extending under the sea, Treadwell was one of the most technologically advanced mines of its day. Up to 2000 people worked at the mine before a collapse allowed the rising tide to flood the tunnels in 1917. All operations at the Treadwell ceased by 1922.

As the Treadwell mines declined and closed, the AJ (Alaska Juneau) mine rose in prominence. After years of losses and labor problems, the mine became profitable in the mid-1920s: with 600 workers it was setting production records. Through the decade, it was the main economic engine of Juneau. In the 1930s, with 1000 workers, it was an important factor in softening the impact upon Juneau of the Great Depression.

Economic pressures of WWII lead to the closure of the AJ in 1944; this was the end of the dominance of mining in the Juneau economy.

Although those two mines are long-since closed, as late as 2010 one of the hydropower plants built to power the AJ was still in use. Fires and time have destroyed most traces of the Treadwell complex; the AJ mine buildings were burned by vandals and little can be seen by visitors these days because of the growth of alders. The Juneau mining district; comprising the area between the Canadian border, Lynn Canal, Admiralty Island, and Frederick Sound, has produced over 7 million ounces of lode gold and 80,000 ounces of placer gold.