While gold was being found in Nome and other parts of Alaska, almost none was in the Copper Valley. Many miners abandoned the provisions they had worked so hard to bring into the Copper Valley, and raced back over the Valdez Glacier to the coast, empty handed.

Photo, N. Benedict, Alaska State Library, PCA 201-132

In 1898, thousands of miners poured into Alaska by way of a treacherous glacier route from Valdez. They battled bugs and swamps - and almost none of them found any gold. It took a lot of energy - and money - to participate in the gold rush. In 1898, miners spent all of May whipsawing raw spruce into fancy boats...

Photo, N. Benedict, AK State Library, PCA 201-49

...then loaded them with hundreds of pounds of goods, and watched them be destroyed in the Klutina River rapids.

Photo, Valdez Museum

Jim Buckley, a Minnesota miner, drowned near the Gakona and Copper Rivers in 1898. You can see today the bluff from which he fell, downstream from the lookout at Mile 1 on the Tok Cutoff. The country's rivers were just one of the many dangers miners faced.

The Ahtna people were also affected by the miners' arrival. Out-of-control forest fires, accidentally set by miners, the flu and other diseases, and the loss of fish and game to hungry outsiders had strong impacts on an already rugged life.

Gold in the Klondike drew the first miners into this region, by way of Valdez. Struggling through difficult territory in order to avoid Canadian authorities, they entered the region over glaciers, dragging their goods with them.

By 1900, miners had discovered and patented large copper deposits that local Athabascans had been using for centuries in what is now Kennicott. This is some of the green malachite and blue azurite found here -- both hydrated copper carbonates.