Chandalar possesses glowing legacy

In the waning days of the Klondike Gold Rush, the Arctic tundra far to the north gave birth to another Alaska gold mining legend. Japanese sailor Frank Yasuda left a whaling vessel to make his home among the Inupiat people at Point Barrow.

A few years later, disease and hardship had decimated the village of Barrow.

Yasuda, an enterprising fellow, and his young Inupiat wife, Eneveloe, joined another explorer in traveling south to the Brooks Mountain Range in search of a new home for the people of Barrow. Near Chandalar Lake 200 miles north of Fairbanks, Eneveloe Yasuda stumbled upon huge gold nuggets in the waters of a small tributary, later named Little Squaw Creek in her honor. That gold discovery enabled the Yasudas to bring Inupiat villagers south to establish the community of Beaver, Alaska.

For his deeds, Frank Yasuda entered history as the "Alaskan Moses" and is the subject of a book, "An Alaskan Tale," by Japanese author Jiro Nitta. The Yasudas also have been inducted into the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame, according to amateur historian Chuck Hawley.

A century later, Eneveloe Yasuda's legacy of discovery lives on in the story of the Little Squaw Gold Mine as modern explorers seek to uncover sizable gold deposits geologists suspect lie virtually undisturbed in the Chandalar district.

Led by Spokane, Wash., geologist and businessman Richard Walters since 2003, Little Squaw Gold Mining Co. has completed more than two years evaluation and study of drilling data from earlier exploration of its nearly 10,000 acres of mining claims, including 426 acres of patented land.

Mining claims may be among state's richest

Thanks to an independent technical report on the mining claims and the outcome of its own preliminary assessment, the company is poised to explore the area in earnest.

Pacific Rim Geological Consultants Inc., hired by Little Squaw Gold in 2004, performed a technical analysis that found several of the placer deposits in the Chandalar district compare favorably with other glacier-fed deposits, such as Valdez Creek, Porcupine and Koyukuk-Nolan in Alaska and Bolotny-Ravkosky in the Russia Far East. Three out of four of these examples have cumulative reserve and past production totals exceeding 500,000 ounces of gold, according to Fairbanks-based Pacific Rim. Only 84,000 ounces have been mined, so far, at Chandalar.

But it is the gold lodes, or veins, in the Chandalar district that really excite Walters. Pacific Rim said the lodes compare with worldwide examples that carry a high grade gold ore over large widths, and strike lengths.

"Placers could provide a fast cash flow, but the real potential of the property is the big quartz veins there," Walters said May 14. "We're very interested in the lode deposits, which we believe can host millions of ounces of gold."

Pacific Rim recommended further exploration of both lode and placer deposits in the district with an eye toward developing a small gold placer operation capable of producing 15,000 to 25,000 ounces of gold per year and identifying more gold veins, each with numerous high-grade ore shoots in excess of 1 ounce per ton. Each vertical shoot contains roughly 20,000 to 50,000 tons of gold ore, Walters said.

"When it's all added up, we believe we're going to have a few million ounces of high-grade gold," he said.

Field work followed up report

Little Squaw Gold hired Barker to follow up on the technical report with summer field work last year. Those efforts identified six new gold-bearing veins, bringing to 30 the total number of known veins and vein swarms on its property. Only four of the veins have been significantly explored.

Little Squaw plans to continue exploring the property this summer, using geophysical techniques such as airborne magnetics and geochemical sampling to identify additional lodes on the property, which is densely covered with vegetation and debris.

"It is a technically challenging project," Walters added.

Little Squaw Gold is currently working to raise capital needed to accomplish a $1.5 million work program, which would be a first-phase appraisal of both the area's placer and lode gold deposits, according to Walters.

The company got a boost recently when the state of Alaska filed suit against the U.S. Department of Interior to obtain a right of way to the 65-mile-long Coldfoot-to-Chandalar Lake Trail. A road from Coldfoot on the Dalton Highway to Chandalar would help to overcome the high cost of mining exploration and potential operations in the district.