Bringing Independence Mine back to life

Chief Ranger Pat Murphy has a dream. Restore the bunkhouse at the historic Independence Mine, north of Anchorage. Bring visitors to stay there overnight and watch old movies in the building's 90-seat theatre on the first floor. In the morning, take them to the mess hall and serve a huge miners' breakfast, loaded with calories. Then give them an underground tour of a mine that was one of Alaska's largest gold producers before World War II.

Murphy is the kind of active guy who is likely to achieve his dream. Driving around the Independence Mine State Park, he advises hikers on the best places to look for blueberries and how to bake a great pie. He is also mentally armed with information about the mine's history, backed up physically by the 50 or so videotapes he has made of former mine employees recounting their stories about the arduous life here.

Independence Mine is in Hatcher Pass, a scenic mountain route between the towns of Palmer and Willow, popular in winter with cross-country skiers. The visitor center, which used to be the mine manager's office, is about 3,500 feet above sea level. The portals that are still visible in the granite could only be reached on foot, a steep trek for the miners each day, and their shifts didn't begin until they arrived at work. The main portal is at a height that is the equivalent of a 22-story building, or 400 steps. The miners were paid $1.04 per hour, which was a decent rate in those days.

Mill building in pieces

The collapsed wooden mill building is the most dramatic sight at Independence Mine. When equipment was removed, the walls had to be taken down, and now jagged pieces of the building are strewn all over the mountainside, beneath the skeletal remains of the original structure. The mine's other buildings have fared much better. Thanks to funding from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and the federal government, obtained by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, many of them have new roofs and foundations. They are painted silver and red, the colors that prewar mine manager Walter Stone chose, in an effort to make the place more cheerful.

The gold here occurs in quartz veins, and after the arrival of placer miners in the late 19th century, Robert Lee Hatcher discovered and staked the first hard rock claim in the Willow Creek Valley in 1906. Two hard rock mines were developed: the Martin Mine on Skyscraper Mountain, and Independence Mine on Granite Mountain. They were brought together in 1938 under one company, the Alaska-Pacific Consolidated Mining Co. In its peak year, 1941, Alaska-Pacific employed 204 men, blasted nearly a dozen miles of tunnels, and produced 34,416 ounces of gold worth over a million dollars - equivalent to over $17 million today.

Ice for drinks

"Way in there they had a core of solid ice and they started mining it," Murphy said, pointing to the mountain. "The miners all hung out at the South Seas Lounge on Spenard (Road in Anchorage), and the owner sent up trucks to buy the 10,000-year-old ice." Murphy relishes these stories and has no problem balancing his responsibilities as a park ranger and his admiration for mining. "I've always really respected the fact that these guys can come out here and developed a mine and some economy," he said.

When the state received the mine as a donation in 1980 and made the area into a park, the manager's building was not included. It was a bar and grill called Independence Lodge, a base for skiers who ascended on a t-bar that used to be here. The state purchased the lodge and converted it into the visitor center, which is now a cozy set of rooms decked out with antiques, the old-time atmosphere heightened by the sounds of swing crackling from some distant gramophone (or perhaps a CD player).

Mine draws 350 visitors a day in the summer

An average of 350 visitors a day passes through the visitor center, totaling around 22,000 people each summer. "Most people are interested in the historical aspect, how they found the gold, extracted the gold, milled the gold," Murphy said. "Most are pretty amazed at how they built the mine up here." RVs can drive up the smooth, paved road that exists today, but when the mine was operating, this road was just a tractor trail. Tractors would come up pulling wagons or wooden freight sleds. There are rusty iron wagon wheels on display at the mine.

To realize his dream of enhancing the mine's attractions, Murphy would like to find an organization to partner with. Power would have to be extended to the mine buildings. There is already an underground tour, but it only takes place once a year, as a fundraiser. Murphy would like to do five or six such tours a day. For now visitors can have an hour-long guided tour of the buildings, some of which have been decorated to look the way they did when miners lived and worked in them.

Volunteers, usually retired people, work as guides at the mine in the summer. Ray Carlton from North Carolina, in his first year at Independence Mine, already has a hefty stock of tales to tell. The mine operated 363 days a year, the two holidays being Christmas Day and - of course - Independence Day. You could tell when the miners had hit high-grade ore, because their lunchboxes would rattle, Carlton said. Good food was valued almost as highly as the gold. "It was said that one of the cooks made a bad batch of donuts on his first day at work and didn't get to work the second day," Carlton recounted.

Kitchen work warm and dry

In the bakery, where there is an old oven, plywood cupboards, and an empty 48-pound metal tub of Swift's Jewel Shortening, Carlton described how the "flunkeys" enjoyed their work serving food in the mess hall, because it was warm and dry, and they didn't have to shovel ore. The miners liked the camp, too, because of the relatively luxurious facilities: a jukebox in the mess hall, running water and even flush toilets - that emptied into the creek.

Officially a "dry" camp, when the miners took off their wet clothes the little silver flasks would come out, according to Carlton.

Mine Manager Walter Stone also liked to invite the foremen to his office to discuss the day's events and have a nip of his special Scotch whisky, which he kept in his safe along with two other important items - his gold and his Cuban cigars.

Stone ensured that the commissary sold items at cost to mine employees, and fired one person for overcharging.

But there was no way to stop the workers from frittering away their hard-earned cash at card games, one of the few forms of entertainment at the mine.

On one occasion there was $10,000 on the table at a card game, or so the legend goes.

Families lived in Boomtown

Single women were not allowed at the mine, but married employees could live with their families in one of the 22 houses that formed the nearby Boomtown. Children attended school here, and someone has creatively scrawled on the blackboard: "March 8, 1939. Good Morning Class! Today's lesson: Geography. 'Ain't' ain't a word and you ain't s'pose to say ain't. Say ain't five times and you ain't goin' to heaven!"

Like all gold mines in the United States, as a non-essential industry the Independence Mine was supposed to shut down when war broke out. But the management found a creative way to remain open. They got an exemption for one year to mine scheelite, which can be used to make hardened steel. "They put all the scheelite quartz into burlap bags, buried them under a building and never shipped out an ounce," Murphy said. "For some reason they also had to keep mining gold. The war production board found out what was going on and closed the mine down in 1943." The burlap bags weren't discovered until 1978.

There were no recorded fatalities at Independence Mine between 1936 and 1943, although there was one in 1980 when the mine re-opened for a short time. There is no record of the illnesses or deaths that may have been caused in the long-term to miners when they worked with mercury, painting it onto metal plates with their bare hands so it would adhere to the gold. This process enabled the mining company to extract 94-96 percent of the gold from the ore. How much gold remains in the mountains, though, is a mystery that may never be solved.

The visitor center at Independence Mine is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, and the entry fee is $5. There may still be places left on this year's underground tour, which takes place Aug. 27, and costs $125. For more information call (907) 745-3975.