Down the street from our Douglas Island home is a popular spot for runners and after work strollers. The forested Treadwell historic trail runs along Gastineau Channel across from downtown Juneau. The trees along the trail are the resilient alder that grow in the aftermath of glacial recession, or in this case, an earthen nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n
If you look straight ahead as you make your way along the dirt, you might miss what\u2019s along side-crumbling cinder blocks covered with green moss, gnarled rusty train tracks, steel poles marking off the fence around what were tennis courts, hollowed out buildings fading into the recesses of time.<\/p>\n
You are walking through what was the biggest and most profitable hard rock gold mining operation in the world. What strikes me about the ruins down the street is that unlike ancient Rome or Greece or Egypt, the past they represent was not that long ago.<\/p>\n
The Treadwell Mines and company town were founded and established by John Treadwell, a carpenter and prospector from San Francisco. He bought his first Treadwell claim for $400. From 1882 to 1922, the mines employed up to 2000 miners from 17 countries and ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except Fourth of July and Christmas.<\/p>\n
The company paid employees well and provided a community that in its heyday had an indoor swimming pool, Turkish baths, sauna, and a department store that brought in the finest toys and gifts from San Francisco. Off-shift, miners, supervisors and their families played on football, baseball and basketball teams. They visited the Treadwell Club, with billiards, dancing, and movies. It even had a special room for writing letters and reading.<\/p>\n
I imagine the wife of a hoist operator in that room, musing on her first impressions of Treadwell when she arrived on a steamship from Washington state in January, 1913. She wrote, \u201cI thought I had never heard so much noise going on when we reached the street. I heard this great roar and was told it was the stamp mills which never stopped day or night, year in and out.\u201d<\/p>\n
[Douglas marks 100-year anniversary of the Treadwell Mine cave-in<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll never forget the next morning when daylight came and I looked out across Gastineau Channel and saw the white mountains looming up. It seemed they were just at my feet. It was breathtaking and frightening all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n The unsigned \u201cA Treadwell Wife Remembers\u201d is published in the bible of Southeast Alaskan mining history, \u201cHard Rock Gold,\u201d by the late David Stone. Stone died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 2012, four years after the Treadwell Historic Preservation and Restoration Society got started.<\/p>\n \u201cDavid left too early,\u201d laments my Douglas neighbor Paulette Simpson, a society member. For going on a decade, Simpson and a small but determined group have been stepping towards their goal of turning the area into an historic park. They\u2019ve erected colorful, descriptive signs with period photos, restored the shell of an iconic pump house at the end of what was the biggest deep water port in Alaska, and are now raising money and restoring the only still intact office building.<\/p>\n On a recent sunny Monday evening, Simpson met me for walk along the trail. \u201cThis is the best time of year to see what\u2019s left,\u201d she noted. \u201cAfter the snows melt and before the summer overgrowth.\u201d<\/p>\n Simpson bubbles with tales of the bygone era of industrial romance and company town amenities. Between the mine\u2019s financial success, the several period newspapers in Douglas and Juneau, and the many preserved and archived photographs, the story of Treadwell \u201cis all there,\u201d says Simpson. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of taking the time.\u201d<\/p>\n The historic trail is parallel to Sandy Beach. Parts of machines that ran the mines and broken dishes from the dining hall emerge from the sand at low tide. The most coveted place for dog walkers in Douglas is not really sandy at all; it\u2019s the result of 80 acres of mine tailings. Over the course of four decades the Treadwell Mines crushed a world record 26 million tons of rock and produced 70 million dollars in gold.<\/p>\n