YUKON-CHARLEY RIVERS The World Turned Upside Down: A History of Mining on Coal Creek and Woodchopper Creek, Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Alaska

When one undertakes a project involving researching and writing history, several things happen. One, your desk is quickly over-run by hundreds of pieces of paper; some large, some small, some printed, some scribbled. Two, you develop bonds with the personalities of the individuals you are researching. And three, you develop good friendships with those people who have offered their help in sharing information about their own lives and the lives of their family members who were involved with the focus of the research.

First, my once clean and orderly desk quickly became the dumping ground for hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes, not unlike the ground behind a dredge where the rocks fall from the stacker. Occasionally I had to "dredge" through the piles trying to make some sort of order out of them. Having experience as an archivist and making a good filing system helped. Every now and then, an issue would come up or a person's name would surface and I just knew I had something on them, but where?

Second, as my research continued, beyond the statistics of how many millions of cubic yards of placer ground was processed through the dredges, how many millions of dollars of gold was recovered, beyond the hundreds of claim location notices and powers-of attorney recorded in Circle and Eagle, the people began taking shape. Women like Flora Brentlinger, who along with her husband Fred, owned and ran the Woodchopper Roadhouse and had claims on both Woodchopper and Coal Creek. Bessie Currie Olson arrived early on the creeks with her husband James H. Currie when they staked their first claims on Iron Creek, a tributary of Woodchopper. She outlived James, later marrying Emil Olson and continuing to work her claims. In a letter dated 1933, she was still working her claims with hired help. Other women, including Mary L. Lewis and Margaret Chambers may have had connections to the Dawson demimonde before, and possibly after, staking their claims on the creeks.

Some people were mysteries before this study began. People had heard stories about "Miss Bissell" who lived with Frank Slaven at his roadhouse. No one really knew who she was or where she came from. Rumors abounded however about her possibly being from red-light district in Fairbanks and only after Slaven's money. As it turns out, Mary Bissell was not an inmate of "The Line." In fact, she appears to be Slaven's niece who came to live with him on the Yukon. Later, in 1938 when he left the country headed for Seattle, she went with him and was there when he crossed over his last summit.

The men of the creeks are equally as notable. Frank Bennett, the old man who lived in his meticulous cabin on Mineral Creek in the mid-1930s, came to Alaska in 1889 when he worked at the Treadwell Mines outside of Juneau. When you visited Frank, you took your shoes off and wore slipper-like shoepacks he kept by the door. Like many of the others living out on the creeks, Bennett liked his booze. He even had his own still that kept him stocked. Glen Franklin, who knew Bennett, commented that "he didn't have much of a singing voice, but when he tied one on, he sure tried."

Many of those who found their homes on the creeks were immigrants from Europe. Martin Adamik, of Hungary, learned to speak English by reading Shakespeare. He talked "like a machine gun" whenever someone came to visit him but he rarely if ever went over to visit the dredge camp. Martin first came to the creeks in 1910 when he filed for an associated claim with three others. Adamik passed away in the spring of 1958 while three of his friends from the camp were visiting his lonely cabin to check on his well being after spending yet another winter in solitude. Martin is buried on a rise not too far from his claims, his cabin and his gardens keeping silent vigil over the creeks.

Phil Berail was a man characterized by three things, first his love of solitude and independence. Berail worked for the dredging companies during the summer as their hydraulic foreman. When winter descended on the creeks and the crews left for their homes, Berail worked as the camp watchman, sometimes taking his team of huskies and heading off into the hills for a winter of trapping. Come spring he would come down the trail, grizzled, dirty and a few pounds thinner, looking like "something out of a Norse myth" ready to start work for another season. He always had his own private cabin at the mines whereas the rest of the crew lived in bunkhouses. Phil's second trait was his great, almost super-human strength. Berail would not wait for help from others to tackle a heavy job, nor would he wait until the CAT arrived to move a 300-foot dredge line. If it had to be done, Phil did it, regardless. Finally, Phil was impervious to pain. On one occasion he cut off his finger, wrapping only a dirty old rag around it to stem the blood flow, and went back to work. On another occasion, he broke his arm. He put it in a sling and went back to work. Several days later, the sling was gone and Berail was working away. Finally, after falling from a truck as an old man, he broke his hip. He walked around at Slaven's Roadhouse to show the crew that he was not really in all that bad of shape. They were finally able to convince him that he needed to go to Fairbanks for proper treatment.

There is Frank Rossbach, the former baker's apprentice, known on the creeks as The Dutch Kid. Rossbach started out in Germany when he ran away signing on as a cabin boy on a tramp steamer to see the world. Eventually landing in Tacoma, he bought passage on a steamer for Skagway and from there walked the rails of the White Pass & Yukon Route to Whitehorse. From there, he floated down the Yukon River to Dawson where he met John Holmstrum who had claims on Mineral and Alice creeks off Woodchopper. Twenty one years old at the time, Rossbach appears to be one of the youngest individuals working on the creeks. His partner and mentor, John Holmstrum, returned to Europe, so Rossbach took on George McGregor as his partner for the next three years until Rossbach too returned to Europe.

George McGregor, "one of God's people," lived on Woodchopper Creek from the mid 1920s until the early 1960s when he finally moved to Eagle. Like most of those living on the creeks, McGregor loved his solitude. Yet, he took an active part in the community of miners when he would visit the dredge camps to get his mail and bring the camp cook fresh salmon from his fishwheels, never accepting money in return.

There are those people living today, who have helped with this project. The men who worked the mines in various capacities that granted their time to answer what at times must have seemed like frivolous questions reaching far back into their memories to remember a person, a place, a time long since forgotten. Many thanks go out to Charles "Chuck" Herbert and Glen Franklin, both of whom worked for Alluvial Golds and Gold Placers, Inc. in the early days. Dietrich Rossbach and Sonja Rossbach Defrances, Frank Rossbach's son and daughter, gave generously of their time, their memories, and the stories their father told them of his adventures in Alaska. Leona Beck shared not only her memories of her grandfather, Samuel Downs Harvey, but also many letters written between he and his family, photographs and personal items that Sam had when he was on the creek. As a historian, the opportunity to hold an item, in this case, Sam's billfold, makes the project so alive. Sherrie Harrison, Frank Slaven's great, great niece, has helped sort out many questions regarding Frank and the "mystery woman" who lived with him. Although the quest to learn more about Miss Bissell continues, I know that I'm no longer alone but it is a team effort. It was through their kindness that I found photographs of many of the early miners from the creeks. These people served to bring the names to life and put people into the history of the creeks.

When I first started searching for the early miners of the creeks, I started with the most recognizable name on the list, Frank Slaven. I was surprised to find that there was a Frank Slaven living in Arizona who has a passion for genealogy and family history. When I first contacted him, he said without a doubt that he was not part of the same family lines as the Frank I was searching for. Now, after several years of searching, and sharing information about "Dead" Frank with "Arizona" Frank and Sherrie Harrison, the two of them have finally decided that they are in fact distant cousins.

The financial and corporate history of Gold Placers, Inc. and Alluvial Golds, Inc. is complicated at best due in part to the fact that Alexander Duncan McRae was Canadian and, although he turned out to be one of the most powerful and influential men in Canada during the first half of the 20th century, little has been written about him. However, his two granddaughters, Lucile Askins and Maureen Hudspeth, have been very helpful with answering questions about their family and helping me make sense of some of the players.

There have been many people around the National Park Service who have put up with tales of my latest discoveries and offered their own insights into things to look at and records to track down. Ralph Tingey, my supervisor at the time, always supported this project, encouraging me to go farther and dig deeper. I owe a debt of thanks to the members of the Biological Resources Division who have shared their office space with me while working on this project. It has been fun representing the "dead and un-natural" resources while working among the "warm and fuzzy" resource folks. Special thanks have to go to Alex Carter, their team leader, who allowed me to take up residence in their corner of the world. Thanks also go to the team members: Ruth Kalerak, Janis Meldrum, Judy Alderson, Nancy Deschu, Sue Mills and Bruce Greenwood. Moreover, to Page Spencer, who always had an interest in what I was up to, or just a humorous joke in the morning, a special thanks. We did not start on the best of terms many years ago, but today I count her among my colleagues, and most of all as a friend.

Most importantly, a special thanks has to go out to the Patty family. In particular Dale and Stanton, the two sons of Ernest and Kathryn Patty who grew up on the creeks before staking their own claims on life. While Stanton went on to make his name as a journalist traveling the world, Dale, the youngest son, is credited as being the youngest person to work as a journeyman winchman at the age of 18. Starting as a mechanic's helper, where he laid on his back greasing CATs, he eventually became the vice-president of the company. That's what I call "climbing the corporate ladder!" Dale and Stanton have answered hundreds of e-mails with questions that at times forced them to dredge up memories from their childhoods (pun intended). Sometimes answering the same question phrased differently several times. Thanks for the dredge driving lessons, Dale!

To Karen Patty, Dale's better half, truly special thanks for letting a historian kidnap her husband for two days in 1998 to talk about "the old days" and then again for nearly three weeks in 2001. She made available her personal memoirs of her days on the creeks when, as a young bride and mother, she followed in the Patty family tradition of raising a family, including a set of twins, on the creeks. She may not know it, but without her help, this study would truly be lacking. Thanks, Karen!

A special thanks goes out to Tom Patty, Dale and Karen's son who, like his father, grew up at the mine. It was truly a wonderful opportunity to spend ten days on the creeks talking about what a young lad remembered of the mines and miners working the creeks. It was a great opportunity to be there when Tom visited the house he and his two brothers grew up in on Woodchopper Creek and to see his expression when he found the toy box on the front porch that still held some of his toys.

Two people, Sylvia Burns and Jim "Tundra Jim" Halloran took the time to carefully read the entire manuscript and put their two cents into editing and improving the final product. Both receive my undying thanks.

And finally, to my wife Carol and children, Jeremiah and Rebekkah, for putting up with all my talking about my latest "find" regarding the creeks and my monopolizing the computer at home for either writing or responding to e-mail for this project. At times it was obvious that they did not have a clue what I was rambling on about, but nonetheless, they always listened. Their questions kept me on the right track or got me back on-track if I had strayed far off. Thanks!

For all that provided information to build this history upon, the information you gave me was correct. Errors in interpreting your information are strictly mine.

DB
Fairbanks, 2003

*The title of this history, The World Turned Upside Down, may be most familiar as the tune played at the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in 1781, signifying the end of the American Revolution. In the case of this study, it is used in reference to the basic action of dredges. They invert the ground as they process the paystreak in the search for gold. The fine materials are deposited at the rear of the dredge whereas the larger gravels and cobbles are laid down further astern by the stacker. As a result, the ancient stream beds are literally "turned upside down."