Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Gold in Alaska makes people think of the Klondike Gold Rush and George Carmack
panning it out of Eldorado Creek (or his wife Kate scrubbing it out of the breakfast dishes
with a handful of sand, depending on which story you believe). My father took a less ro-
mantic view; he and his brother Danny worked at the Independence Mine the winter of
1949-1950, and Dad said it was a wet, dirty, dangerous job for which nobody ever paid
him enough money.
Independence Mine closed in 1951. Much of what was left behind is still there and is
open to the public. There is a Visitor's Center, formerly the mine manager's home, a mu-
seum in what used to be the Assay Office, and the remains of an operation housed in
twenty-seven buildings, employing two hundred people.
A display at the Visitor's Center illustrates their work and life. The foreman made $350
a month, plus room and board. Muckers made ninety-three cents an hour and had to pay
$1.50 a day for their board and room. Cooks, such a valuable commodity that they were
given priority seating on Alaska Airlines flights, made only a hundred dollars a month less
than the foreman did. An invoice from grocers Turner & Pease in Seattle, dated Septem-
ber 26, 1941, informs us that the mine bought butter at forty and a half cents per pound,
eggs at forty-two cents a dozen, and a one-pound loaf of Tillamook cheese for twenty-
nine cents. Last week Carrs had two-pound bricks of Tillamook cheese on sale for $3.49
each, and that was such a good deal they restricted the customers to one brick each.
The Visitor's Center also loans out gold pans and tells you how to use them if you'd
like to try your hand at washing a little gold out of Fishhook Creek, and conducts walking
tours of the mine. If you're lucky, Park Ranger Pat Murphy will be your guide. Pat has
been the area ranger for fifteen years, and everytime someone who used to live and work
at Independence shows up he hustles them in front of his video camera. He has over forty
tapes now, and he talks about the heyday of the mine as if the Independence had shut
down yesterday. He is presiding over the current renovation of the park, which kept it
closed through the summer of 2000. Pat says the park has recently acquired the subsurface
rights to the mine, which one day will allow visitors to enter the mine itself, travel a mile
beneath Granite Mountain, and emerge on the other side of Hatcher Pass.
There is also a self-guided walking tour, with interpretive signs that are witty and de-
scriptive. One sports pictures of the women of Hatcher Pass, including one of Rusty Dow
