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Independence Gold Mine

An Alaskan State Historical Park
The Independence Gold mine was an operating mine from roughly 1906 to 1951.  Most of the buildings and processing structures are still there, in various states of ruin.  Now an Alaskan State Historical Park, it's fun to see what structures still exist and to get a notion of how the mine was operated.

 

 

 

 



 


Cool!  Watch out for that br-iiii-dge.  These old trestles have seen better times.  It doesn't sound like there is a plan to preserve and save them from rotting away.  "Too far gone" a plaque says somewhere - a prognosis for much of the site.  Too bad though.  All it would take is to rebuild some of these critical structures is money, for sure.

 

 

 

Here's a map of the mine from the Alaskan Division of Parks and Outdoors Recreation

 

 

 


Running water was very important to the mining process in this time period.  Here's a small stream runs right through the center of the mine complex.

 



 

This mine is very high in the mountains. The clouds add a bit of mysticism to the place.

 




 

blacksmith, tools, ore shorting, machine shop
Now this structure has seen better times.  This was part of the main processing building at the end of the ore car trestle.  It was probably a storage area although the mine site power generation and ore sorting was performed in this area.  Hard to tell really, what it was used for (other than for storing decaying pieces of wood and metal like it's doing well at right now:-)).

 



 

 

The trestle and supporting structures are the coolest part of the place.  Isn't there a senator from Alaska that can get money for bridges to nowhere?  Perhaps someone should call him to secure funding to stabilize and rebuild the structures here:-)

 

 



 

Neat historic place this gold mine.

 

 

 

 

There's GOLD in them' dar hills!

 

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