If you enter the copse of trees just up from the Treadwell Mine Pump House on the shoreline of Gastineau Channel, you will find the phrase “life was good” inscribed on a rock describing a place and time that existed 100 years ago. It’s sometimes difficult to appreciate that you are living in good times until hard times arrive. In March 1917, the communities of Treadwell and Douglas were one month away from a catastrophe that would change the history of Alaska forever. Had it not happened, Juneau would be a very different place today. April 21, 1917 was the day the world’s largest gold mine would suddenly and cataclysmically end.
The story of the founding of Douglas and the Treadwell Mine is well known. A carpenter named John Treadwell was asked by associates in his hometown of San Francisco to investigate the gold strike at Juneau. He arrived to find that most of the promising claims in Silverbow Basin were spoken for, so he turned his attention to Douglas Island. There he found promising ore samples and moved to buy the adjacent claim at Paris Creek. It was owned by a prospector named French Pete who was eager to sell what he thought was a washed-out claim. He needed the money to open a hardware store on Front Street in Juneau. Once he had the land secured, Treadwell brought in an ore-crushing stamp mill, and it soon became evident that he would need more machinery, men, and money.
By 1915, the Treadwell Mine had developed into the largest hard rock mining operation in the world. The mines tunneled to a depth of 2,700 feet below the surface — almost as far down as Mount Juneau is up. It employed over 2,000 men who worked around-the-clock shifts, 363 days a year. The sound of 960 ore-crushing stamps pulverizing rocks was constant. On the two days in the year that the mine shut down, the silence was so unnerving that people couldn’t sleep.
[Douglas marks 100-year anniversary of the Treadwell Mine cave-in]
The two days off were Christmas and the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July was the only summer day the mines didn’t work and to this day, it is celebrated in Douglas with extra gusto. Workers and their families were provided many benefits including health care, a dining hall, a nonprofit company store, and admission to the Treadwell Club which included a library, swimming pool, bowling alley, billiards hall, an 800-seat auditorium and even a darkroom. As April 21, 1917, approached, life was good for the citizens of Gastineau Channel.
Before the cave-in
Alaskans were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the purchase of Alaska on March 30, but the outside world hardly noticed. For the first time in history, war would extend to the whole world and the U.S. had just entered the fray.
German submariners were torpedoing passenger vessels with U.S. citizens on board. In March of 1917, a German courier was intercepted and found to have in possession a German proposal for Mexico to enter the war against the U.S. in exchange for land lost to the Americans. In April 6, 1917, the U.S.entered the war and even in the territory of Alaska, that news dominated conversation. The newspapers of the time reported there was a call for volunteers in Douglas and that drills were being conducted with new recruits. The shouts of “Squad left!” and “Squad right!” could be heard on the baseball field in Douglas. Women were meeting to join the Red Cross and help in the war effort.
Even with the backdrop of war on everybody’s mind, daily life was busy in the spring 100 years ago. The weather was unusually sunny after a hard winter in which three major avalanches roared down Juneau mountains. The first was on Mount Juneau, where a massive slide wiped out the road going to the Perseverance Mine, covering the road with snow 90 feet deep. The second was at the Alaska-Gastineau mine where two men were killed when a massive slide 300 feet wide took out 1,000 feet of power and telegraph lines. The third was in Sheep Creek above Thane where 300 feet of rail was wiped out. Although Douglas Island residents were not affected, they would have heard the terrifying roar of the slides and their sky would be darkened by the billowing clouds of snow powder ignited bythe slides.
The rivalry between Juneau and Douglas was alive and well. The two communities were positioned side-by-side but separated by water. A ferry boat called the Alma went back and forth across the channel. The first bridge between the communities was not constructed until the 1930s. Today, if you were to walk to the waterline from the Senate Building, you would go down a street named Ferry Way. A hundred years ago you walked this very route to catch the ferry to Douglas. The trip was a short one, but when you arrived, you were in a different time and place. Literally: The islanders had their own time zone. There was a 45 minute difference between the two communities who competed in all ways.
Beer was about to become illegal. The Douglas Brewery was advertising a going-out-of-business promotion and was selling and delivering cases of beer to local residences. In the previous year, Alaska had voted in a referendum 2 to 1 to ban the sale of alcohol starting in 1918. This came two years before Prohibition was made the law of the land in the form of a constitutional amendment. Some point to the sudden expansion of newly-franchised female voters for the support of the referendum. The Alaska Legislature was formed and met for the first time in 1914 and its first act was to grant women the right to vote — a full seven years before the U.S. Constitution was amended to ensure this across the nation.
The tax on alcohol was initially instituted for the purpose of funding education. Some old timers winked and swore that they “only drank to support education.” Representatives in the territorial Legislature were seriously concerned that the upcoming prohibition of alcoholwould directly impact school funding.
Many of the issues of today were being discussed 100 years ago. The Juneau High School debate team was facing off with the Douglas High School debate team on the issue of immigration. The question before the team was whether the U.S. should require a literacy test before granting citizenship.
The income tax that was recently instituted was being criticized because too many people appeared to be underreporting their incomes. There was a debate whether income taxes should become a public document so that people could tell if the high life that their neighbors were living matched the income they were reporting to the Internal Revenue Service.
[How the Treadwell Mine collapsed]
In 1917, Juneau and Douglas had more theaters than at any other time. People liked seeing news clips from the life they left behind. A hundred years ago, “The Rink,” starring Charlie Chaplin, was playing in Douglas to good reviews. The new Mary Pickford film was due to hit town in a couple of weeks and reservations were being taken.
The steamer schedule to Seattle and Vancouver was posted in the paper with connecting trains to Chicago and San Francisco. The Princess Sophia was on the run and headed for its own date with disaster in the next year.
One hundred years ago, Mount McKinley (Denali) National Park was established and this was supported by the Alaska Delegation to Congress. James Wickersham led the effort to create the park to protect its wildlife and bring in oversight to its development. They argued that bringing in a government railroad would bring in visitors, and where there was nothing now, that one day visitors might beable to stay at a lodge in the park and enjoy the wonderment of the place.
People enjoyed watching baseball in the evening. The major leagues didn’t start playing night baseball until the 1970s, but in Alaska, playing at night didn’t mean playing in the dark. The Gastineau Channel League featured five competitive teams in 1917 — teams fromJuneau, Thane, Treadwell, Douglas and Perseverance. The Treadwell field was in the middle of town near the beach and drew large crowds. Baseball ringers were recruited from outside and were given lucrative “jobs” in the mines so they could be ready to play. The audiences for the games were measured in the thousands and a big part of the draw was gambling. After the regular season, teams would play challenge matches with Whitehorse, Skagway and Dawson City. These cities had baseball leagues as well and when theteams traveled north, hundreds of fans would travel with the team and the games would draw audiences estimated at 5,000. In 1917, the Perseverance team would be declared the best team in the north by winning the Gastineau Channel championship anddefeating teams from Whitehorse, Dawson City, Cordova and Seward.
Basketball March madness was at hand in Douglas 100 years ago. High school teams played at the Treadwell Natatorium for the channel championship. Treadwell claimed the title by defeating the team representing the Arctic Brotherhood. Both men and women played.
Disaster day and what followed
There was little warning leading up to the cataclysm of April 21, 1917. Looking back, the signs were there. The swimming pool was just about to reopen after cracks in its structure had been repaired. Engineers had noted the slight depression happening under the dining hall, and the rail line had sunk, but other areas had similar depressions that eventually halted. The difference may have been the 18.1 high tide that occurred that early morning.
At 11:30 p.m., engineers on a close watch observed water leaking into the mine. They sounded the alarm and the 350 men that were working below at the time began to evacuate. Some of the men were as deep as 2,100 feet below the surface in tunnels that extended below the waters of Gastineau Channel. Elevators brought the men to the surface in small groups at a time as the water poured in. Airpockets trapped by the incoming rush of water were being created below, causing great pressure. As the last two men were being hoisted up and out of the mine, there occurred an explosion of water up out of the shaft that observers estimated at 300 feet high.
[Demise of world’s largest gold mine helped build Juneau]
At the point of the breach, water poured in at an accelerated pace and the surrounding buildings fell into to the roaring swirling maelstrom. First it was the swimming pool, then a large oil tank was sucked down below the surface like water swirling in a kitchen sink. The fire hall fell next and immediately disappeared below. The Treadwell club was left teetering on the precipice as the last of the trapped air and swirling waters abated into an equilibrium. Large cracks had developed emanating from the source of the disaster. One ran through the baseball field nearby. The original glory hole had filled with water and became a gawker’s destination. A security perimeter was quickly established and homes between the cave in and the glory hole were evacuated. However, in the end, not much more settling occurred following the event. Miraculously, or due to practiced safety drills, no one died in the accident. News of the cave-in was in newspapers worldwide.
The event was shocking to the inhabitants of Gastineau Channel. There was a short run on the banks in town and some stores went to a cash only basis for a couple of days, but the panic was short lived. By the following week, the optimistic citizens of Douglas Island were making plans to pump out the water and work around the flooded shafts. After all, the great mines of Juneau had been the source of creative innovations up until that day — the 20 mile Treadwell Ditch, the largest air compressor ever built, the longest shaft, the first arc dam ever built at Salmon Creek. These were people who problem solved when they needed to.
But as time would pass and future events would portend, it would not come to be. The nation turned to fighting the war that had just begun for Americans and the following year there would be an outbreak of the deadliest flu on record, the Spanish Influenza. The Princess Sophia would shipwreck in November 1918, with 350 lost souls, and five years later a great fire would destroy much of what remained of Douglas and the mine.
[100 years ago, Treadwell era came to a spectacular end]
Many of the displaced workers would find jobs across the channel in mines that were short-staffed at the time. One of the four mines at Treadwell survived for a few more years and provided some work. Ironically, the local newspaper predicted in the paper printed on the day of the collapse that unemployed workers on the East Coast would soon be heading our way as there was a need for labor.
In all, the mine would extract $67 million of gold at roughly $20 per ounce. At today’s price of $1,232.00 per ounce, that gold would be worth $4.1 billion.
Despite rumors at the time that the mine had played out, the company was proceeding on plans to extend the mine into a promising new direction. Subsequent analysis by modern geologists suggests that the Treadwell Mine could have had a future as half the gold in Juneau is still in the hills.
But as events would unfold, there was not to be a revival. Today, little remains of the original town and mine except the foundations. The Treadwell Historical Society has done its best to provide interpretive signage along the nature trail that begins at Sandy Beach and takes you to the Glory Hole. The society was able to put a new roof on the single most visible icon associated with the story of Treadwell — the salt water pump. It stands out in the channel at the entrance to the Douglas Harbor like the Statue of Liberty. It greets a million cruise ship visitors a year. It is a reminder of a time gone past, when “life was good.”
• Larry Johansen is a second generation Alaskan who has written three books about Alaska. His latest is “Finding Juneau: Its People, Places, and Past.” He is a semi-retired tour guide who still does walking tours of downtown Juneau from time to time. Contact him atLarryJ@AKSightseeing.com.
Ten miners work underground at the 1,500 foot level of Treadwell’s Ready Bullion mine. (Juliane Nick Dexter Photograph Collection | Alaska State Library Historical Collection, ASL-P40-19)
