Gold on Anchorage's doorstep at Crow Creek

Part of the fun of recreational mining is being outdoors in a beautiful landscape. At Crow Creek mine near Girdwood, 38 miles south of Anchorage, the mountain backdrop is enhanced by the presence of wooden buildings and rusty pieces of equipment that have been preserved from the mining operation that began here in 1898. The Toohey family, who own the mine, have lived here for more than 30 years with no electricity, telephone or running water. From May to September they welcome recreational miners for a $5 fee, or $10 if you bring a metal detector.

There are 570 acres at Crow Creek for experienced recreational miners and total newcomers to try their luck. Jakob Loeffel, shoveling mud into buckets, came all the way from Switzerland. He found out about the mine on the Internet and decided to spend three months in Alaska, having previously visited the state 24 years ago. Recreational mining is his hobby in Switzerland. By contrast, Chris Hansell from Anchorage epitomizes the most casual of recreational miners, gold-panning in his sunglasses. "I just started five minutes ago," he said. "The guy at the booth showed me how to do it. It's pretty neat."

For beginners, Sean Toohey (the guy at the booth), supplies a plastic bag full of dirt and rocks with a little gold mixed in. They can practice by panning the dirt from the bag and comparing the gold with anything they find at the creek. Recreational miners can keep their gold but not the antiques they dig up, because this is a national historic site. There are hundreds of small pieces of iron equipment on the claims. "If they didn't need it they just threw it over their back," Toohey said of the early 20th-century miners.

Family still mines commercially

In response to a question about how much gold is left on the property, Toohey was somewhat evasive. He and his family still mine commercially, using excavators and bulldozers. "Everyone wants to know how much gold you have," he said. "I fill a cereal bowl in a year. It's not 100 pounds, but it's more than five pounds." Gold nuggets are collectors' items and can be sold on websites such as eBay, sometimes for twice or three times the $427 per ounce current market rate for gold. The nuggets that recreational miners find here usually range from almond-sized to one ounce.

The type of mining that took place here before World War II has been outlawed since 1952 because it was so devastating to the environment. Miners sat astride water cannons known as hydraulic giants and blasted through 250 feet of glacially deposited gravel at up to 50,000 gallons a minute, creating a huge gorge. "If you left it going overnight there could be a hole the size of a gym," Toohey said. Between 15 and 30 miners worked here in arduous conditions. Rhubarb was imported to prevent scurvy. The only other available fruit, elderberries, were used to make wine. Alcohol and women were banned from the camp, but the Tooheys found a still in the woods about a mile away.

Bunkhouse restoration planned

A bunkhouse with up to 30 bunks burned down in the 1920s, and the Tooheys hope to restore it soon, after removing all the antiques from the site. So far they have found guns, eyeglasses and a set of false teeth. The buildings that are still standing include a blacksmith's shop (with tools on display), a meat cache and a panning shed. Toohey, his wife and two young daughters live in the mine owner's cabin, outside of which a Model T Ford is parked. Sean's sister, Kate, an artist, lives and works in another cabin on the property. His brother Cam lives in Anchorage and oversees the Department of the Interior's Alaska operations.

Large-scale commercial mining ended at Crow Creek when World War II broke out and the miners and equipment were transferred to the war effort. After the war, the price of labor tripled but the price of gold stayed the same, so reopening the mine would have been uneconomical. Its Norwegian owner, Arne Erickson, who had been a manager at the mine, lived opposite the Tooheys on L Street in downtown Anchorage. Erickson asked Sean's father, Barney, if he would like to look after a place in Girdwood. Barney turned down the offer a few times before actually going to see Crow Creek and falling in love with the buildings.

When his health failed, Erickson sold the mine to Barney Toohey. At first the Tooheys didn't live there permanently, but in 1972 they went down in the middle of winter and found that people were loading antiques onto sleighs. "The only way to protect the mine was to live here," Sean Toohey said. "We spent 20 years restoring the buildings and cleaning the place up ... We used to ski three miles to the bus stop every day. Then our father bought us a snow machine and that changed our life."