AREA HISTORY

Alaska’s Woodchopper Creek on the Upper Yukon River got its name because the area served as a refueling stop for paddlewheel steamboats as they moved up and down the river. Early residents cut and stacked wood at the confluence of the creek and river to earn much-needed cash. Woodchopper Creek has a rich history steeped in the lure of the riches of gold. During the Klondike-Alaska Gold Rush of 1898, miners that arrived too late to stake claims on the Canadian side of the border moved over to the Woodchopper Creek area of Alaska. The Alaska gold rush then shifted to the creek’s mineral deposits as prospectors began searching for placer gold.

In the early days, using picks, shovels, and primitive sluice boxes, miners washed as much gravel as they could manage during short summers. During the winter, they sunk mining shafts along the creeks to reach bedrock and found the thin layer of gold dust and nuggets called a paystreak. By 1906 eighteen men were mining on seven claims on the creek and its tributaries.

Most of the work was done by hand, but one small hydraulic plant was used to blast away at creek-side gravel with pressurized water, and three steam hoists were used to lift buckets of gravel out of mining shafts. In 1935 the Canadian investor General Alexander McRae was scouting for locations for mining on an industrial scale, and with the help of Ernest Patty of the Alaska School of Mines, he selected both Coal Creek and Woodchopper Creek.

Soon the price of gold went on the rise, and McRae’s enormous dredges were doing the work of hundreds of men. By operating non-stop under the midnight sun, McRae’s company, Alluvial Golds, Inc., was processing 3,000 cubic yards of gravel every day and made relatively poor ground pay well.

The dredge at Woodchopper Creek operated until 1960, when diminishing returns and high operating costs spelled the end of an era. Private interests used the dredge in 1962, and by 1971 Joseph Vogler of Fairbanks purchased the Woodchopper mining claims and continued mining periodically until his death in 1993.

Today the patented claims along Woodchopper Creek exist as a private inholding within Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. The dredge and mining camps are ‘reminders of the ingenuity and grit of placer miners’ along the Yukon River. The Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve was created in part to preserve the history of the Klondike-Alaska Gold Rush and gold mining in the region. Between Eagle and Circle, along the Yukon River, visitors can view evidence of past gold mining. Mining camps with their primitive log cabins and tools of the trade, including sluice boxes, tailings piles, hydraulic pipe, steam boilers, drilling rigs, and earth-moving equipment, dot the riverbanks. From the air over Coal Creek and Woodchopper Creek, one can also see the gold dredges with their neatly piled tailings, telltale signs of past dredge mining operations. These relics of the Klondike-Alaska Gold Rush serve as reminders of an era past and the power of mining to transform the landscape.