Unlike many prospectors who drifted about Alaska, George Pilz actually knew something about mining. Just about anyone could work a placer claim. Placers yielded the “free” or loose gold that had been eroded long ago from a vein of ore. Placer gold was typically found as grains and tiny nuggets along the sands and gravels of creeks and other watercourses. Lode mining was an entirely different matter. Lode claims mined the gold-bearing vein itself. Extracting gold-bearing ore usually required digging extensive tunnels and shafts. Even then the ore had to be crushed in stamp mills and separated into high-grade concentrates from which the gold could be smelted. Placer claims along watercourses were frequently assigned numbers up- and downstream from the discovery site (hence No. 1 Below, No. 4 Above, etc.), whereas lode claims were usually given names.
Pilz was a German who immigrated to America shortly after the Civil War. He earned his mining experience by working in California in a copper smelter and then a stamp mill. In 1878, at the age of thirty-three, Pilz found himself in San Francisco and in poor health, suffering a particularly bad bout of the inflammatory rheumatism that plagued him all of his life. Quite by accident, Pilz bumped into Nicholas Haley, an acquaintance from his stamp mill days, who was trying to develop a gold lode at Silver Bay east of Sitka. No one, grumbled Haley, seemed to know how to extract the gold from the ore vein. Pilz agreed to have a look and arrived in Sitka early in the spring of 1879. By fall, he had supervised the construction of the first stamp mill in Alaska. The Silver Bay veins proved of low quality, but there were enough rumors of other gold along the Inside Passage to make Pilz think twice. Unable to cover a lot of ground himself, he decided to recruit others to do some prospecting for him so that he could sift the truth from the many rumors.
In 1880, Richard Harris was forty-six. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and worked in silver mines in Mexico and camps throughout the Rockies before joining the Cassiar rush in British Columbia in the mid-1870s. Harris had a jet-black, flaring mustache and a strong-willed temper to match, but he was particularly attached to his friends. One of them was Joe Juneau, a French-Canadian born in Quebec. Harris and Juneau first met in the Cassiar country but quickly found that they had each been around some of the same mining camps throughout the West. At fifty-three, Juneau was old enough to be George Pilz’s father. Suffice to say, both Harris and Juneau were rough-cut and hard-core.
Harris and Juneau were at Fort Wrangell in the summer of 1880 when they heard that Pilz was looking for prospectors. Pilz had a number of miners in the field that summer, spread out as far north as Cross Sound and as far south as Prince of Wales Island. Harris and Juneau made the trip to Sitka—getting passage on the steamer California with a grubstake—and agreed to explore the mainland for Pilz in the vicinity of Holkham Bay.
With three Tlingit to help paddle, Harris and Juneau left Sitka on July 19 and wound their way through Peril Strait, around Point Gardner, and across Frederick Sound to the mainland just south of the bay. The story of what happened next should be fairly well documented because both Harris and Pilz wrote accounts of the next few months. Pilz, in fact, wrote two accounts. The problem, of course, is that Pilz’s accounts differ from each other as well as from Harris’s version. Dates, locations, and characterizations of heroes and villains vary in each account.
Apparently, Harris and Juneau proceeded to prospect the mainland northward from Holkham Bay with only minor luck until August 17, 1880, when they investigated a roaring stream pouring into Gastineau Channel. Moseying up the creek, they first found some “color”—traces of free gold—but then stumbled upon gold float—gold embedded in quartz and a strong sign that a rich vein, or even the mother lode, was nearby. How much prospecting the two did along the creek, and how quickly they returned to Sitka, are points that differ in the telling. When Harris and Juneau arrived in Sitka in early September, they told Pilz of their find. He urged them to resupply and return to the stream that they called Gold Creek to stake claims.
Paddling along Gastineau Channel on their return, who should Harris and Juneau meet but John Muir and Samuel Hall Young. The two prospectors must have fidgeted a little when they learned that Muir and Young had just camped near the mouth of what they were calling Gold Creek. Later, Young wrote in his account of the meeting that Harris suggested to Juneau that they try their luck there. Undoubtedly, Harris and Juneau—veterans that they were—had decided to play it very coy until their unexpected visitors left. They knew for sure what was up Gold Creek, and as Muir and Young headed north after glaciers, Harris and Juneau headed up into Silver Bow Basin after gold.
And gold they found. Not scattered placer deposits of a few flakes, but outcrops of a vein of quartz laced with gold. French-Canadian Juneau spoke only halting English and could neither read nor write it. Thus, it fell to Harris to be elected recorder and to draw up the papers forming the Harris Mining District. This he did on October 4, 1880. Then he and Juneau staked claims up and down the basin for themselves, Pilz, and their other grubstakers, including Captain James Carroll and the purser of the steamer California. After staking a total of nineteen placer claims and sixteen lode claims in Silver Bow Basin, they returned to the mouth of Gold Creek on October 18 and there staked out 160 aces as the future site of Harrisburgh. So far, it looked as if Joe Juneau was getting the short end of the naming business.
This accomplished, Harris and Juneau returned to Sitka again, but this time they took with them about 1,000 pounds of high-grade ore. Their arrival on November 17 caused quite a stir, and the first major gold rush in Alaska was quickly off and running. Captain Henry Glass of the USS Jamestown (the same vessel that had been undergoing repairs in Shanghai when the Shenandoah made its Pacific romp) provided one of his ship’s steam launches to take Harris, Juneau, Pilz, and some miners back to Harrisburgh. Others swarmed on board the steamer Favorite and set off as well. Soon, about three dozen miners were busy staking town lots and nearby claims. The first building in the boomtown appears to have been a prefabricated cabin that Pilz shipped on the Favorite and hastily erected.
But there was trouble brewing. Harris’s actions in establishing the Harris Mining District had been taken under the provisions of the Mining Act of 1872. This was the cornerstone of mining law, and it gave a tremendous amount of local control and discretion to individual mining districts. Common practice throughout the West demanded, however, that at least five miners be present at the creation of the rules for the district and the election of its recorder. Harris had stretched matters some when he included his three Tlingit companions as “miners.” Additionally, there was the question of Joe Juneau’s literacy in the whole proceeding. What seems to have called these issues into question was the fact that Harris and Juneau had been exceedingly generous in the number of claims they had allocated to themselves and others through proxies. As one veteran from the Cassiar who showed up on Gold Creek groused, “We came from the Cassiar, where that didn’t go.”52
Lieutenant Commander Charles H. Rockwell, the executive officer of the USS Jamestown, was dispatched to Harrisburgh in a second steam launch to render whatever assistance might be necessary to preserve order. But the miners had matters well in hand. At a meeting on February 9, 1881, thirty-one miners met and declared Harris’s rules and election as district recorder null and void. They did, however, ratify the location records of the previously filed claims. The next day, just to show how the tide was running against Harris, thirty-four miners met and voted to rename the town. Lieutenant Commander Rockwell seems not to have done much except administer an oath to each of the meeting participants swearing their American citizenship, but the name Rockwell nonetheless received eighteen votes. Fifteen votes were cast for the name Juneau City and only one for Harrisburgh.53
The U.S. Navy quickly embraced the Rockwell name, but the postmaster general, acting upon earlier information, soon gave official status to the name Harrisburgh and appointed a postmaster. Miners who wanted to be certain they got it correctly on their location notices referred to the town as “Harrisburgh, also known as Rockwell,” or “Rockwell, also known as Harrisburgh,” using or dropping the last h according to personal whim.
By early May the population of “Rockwell, also known as Harrisburgh” had increased to 150 miners. Most were veteran prospectors who had come from the Cassiar diggings via Fort Wrangell or from Sitka. There were also about 450 Tlingit in various camps along Gastineau Channel. They appear to have congregated in order to trade, to hire out as packers, and just to check up on all of the excitement. Some miners expressed concern about being greatly outnumbered, but other than an individual scuffle or two, no conflicts occurred between the two groups.
As for the Tlingit, they had long ago gotten used to these foreigners frequenting first Sitka and then Fort Wrangell, but Harrisburgh was to be the first major white settlement in southeast Alaska except for those two long-established trading posts. The Auk Tlingit from nearby Auke Bay must have been particularly concerned about this very rapid influx of newcomers into their hunting and fishing grounds. Various versions of the story have the Auk Tlingit Cowee playing a role in the gold discoveries, some even suggesting that he almost took Harris and Juneau by the hands and led them into Silver Bow Basin. If so, the subsequent invasion must have had him wondering what changes he had caused.
Before long, steamers were making their way up Gastineau Channel with increasing regularity, including Captain Carroll’s California. This proximity to easy transportation was one major difference between this first gold rush to Rockwell/Harrisburgh and the later rushes to the Yukon country. The steamers meant that Rockwell/Harrisburgh was comparatively easy to reach, and people and supplies quickly arrived. With a steady supply of building materials, fixtures, and even amenities, the town soon took on the air of permanence. Whereas later Yukon camps would freeze over for the winter, it was easy to leave Rockwell/Harrisburgh at any time of the year. One could take the monthly mail steamer and with the right connections in Portland be in San Francisco in two weeks, or vice versa. More than one miner took advantage of this for a little midwinter spree and to resupply.
Meanwhile, things were also starting to boom on Douglas Island on the western side of Gastineau Channel. Far from being a sideshow, Douglas Island was to become a major attraction in itself. Although not included in Harris’s original description of the Harris Mining District, Douglas Island first boasted a number of placer claims, including a discovery made at the mouth of Ready Bullion Creek by William Meehan on December 17, 1880. Meehan is supposed to have picked up a nugget and shouted, “Look at this! Why it’s almost ready bullion!”54 (This stream is now called Bullion Creek, and Ready Bullion Creek is just to the north of it.) These placers reportedly yielded some $15,000 before they played out over the next two years. But the lode claims were a different story.
Beginning with the Ready Bullion and Golden Chariot lodes, claims were staked along the eastern side of Douglas Island during the winter and spring of 1881. Pierre J. Erussard, better known as “French Pete,” was a veteran prospector said to be descended from an influential French family. He left France after the Franco-Prussian War and arrived in Seattle in 1872. From then on, Erussard was on the mining trail. On May 1, 1881, Erussard staked what his location notice called the “Parris” lode claim a short distance north of the Golden Chariot. Whether the spelling was intended, a simple mistake in the field, or ignorance on the part of this son of France, the claim and a creek were soon referred to as Paris.
Adjacent to the Paris lode, Henry Borein had trouble staking his lode claim not because of the terrain but because of the large number of bears prowling the underbrush. He finally got the corners in and gave the claim the name Bear’s Nest. It turned out to be more of a hornet’s nest. Borein thought that he was on an extension of the Paris lode, but the Bear’s Nest was later proven to hold only barren rock. This didn’t stop several of its later owners from carefully salting the claim with Paris ore and unloading it on some unsuspecting English investors.
The Paris lode soon became important as the cornerstone of the great Treadwell Mine. John Treadwell was a carpenter and builder by training who arrived in Rockwell/Harrisburgh in the summer of 1881. Like George Pilz, Treadwell had gained some lode experience in California. He was sent north by John D. Fry, a San Francisco banker for whom he was building a mansion, to investigate the source of the Alaskan gold that was starting to arrive at San Francisco’s mint. Pilz tried to interest Treadwell in some of his claims up Gold Creek, but Treadwell was unimpressed and turned to Douglas Island instead.
French Pete Erussard was also operating a store in town. He was always short of cash, and—depending on who is telling the story—he sold the Paris lode to Treadwell on September 13, 1881, in payment of the freight bill Erussard owed for goods that were arriving on the mail steamer. Supposedly, this bill came to $264, but in later years Erussard screamed bloody murder that he had been taken. It was not the first time—nor would it be the last—that when a toad turned into a prince on the mining frontier, history had a way of being rewritten.
But in the beginning even Treadwell did not recognize what he had in the Paris. He poked around on some other properties and then returned to San Francisco. His opinion of the Paris lode quickly changed when he had some milling tests run on ore samples. John D. Fry found someone else to finish his house, while he and four others hastily organized the Alaska Mill and Mining Company. They hurriedly sent Treadwell back to Douglas Island to buy up adjacent claims.
John Treadwell eventually sold his interests in the operations in 1889 for a reported $1.5 million but the Treadwell Mine complex went on to become the major producer of the area, encompassing a complex system of claims and tunnels along Douglas Island and extending underground beneath Gastineau Channel. By one report, the properties produced $24 million in gold during their first twenty years of operation as compared to only $4 million in the rest of the district. The Treadwell operations came to an abrupt end in April 1917 when the network of tunnels extending under Gastineau Channel collapsed.55
Back on the other side of the channel in 1881, Gold Creek and Silver Bow Basin continued to produce. The creek and basin were staked solid from the mouth of the creek far up the neighboring slopes. By the end of the year, 293 placer claims and 131 lode claims had been located in the Harris Mining District, which as previously revised now included Douglas Island. No miners meetings were held over the course of the summer, but when fall brought a slowdown of mining operations, a meeting was called to address numerous cases of overlapping claims, allocations of water (an essential ingredient in placer operations), and lot encroachments on the town waterfront.
One issue to come before the December 12, 1881, general meeting of the town was that nagging question of what it was called. The presence of the U.S. Navy was declining, and while Captain Glass attended the meeting, it is not certain how much of an impetus, if any, his pending decision to abandon the navy post there had on what happened next. It was moved and seconded that the meeting vote on a new name for the town, and out of 72 votes cast, 47 voted for Juneau City, 21 for Harrisburgh (with or without the last h), and only 4 for Rockwell.
When the results were announced, Richard Harris quickly moved to call another meeting solely for the purpose of naming the town, presumably to give him some time to lobby in the saloons. But the motion was denied (23 to 43). Word was dispatched on the December mail steamer to the postmaster general, and the change was made on January 10, 1882. Perhaps thinking city a little too grand, the department made the name officially Juneau. Harrisburgh, Rockwell, Juneau—take your pick; they were all the same place. Fortunately, the early movement to have it called Pilzburg never got very far.
Joe Juneau went on to make some money but ended up spending most of it in Juneau’s saloons. Not content to end up sitting on a bar stool, he followed the mining trail to Circle City in 1895 when he was sixty-nine and then died four years later in Dawson, having lived to see the boom of the Klondike. His last wish was to be buried in his namesake town, a wish that was finally granted in 1903. Richard Harris also made some money but lost most of it in complicated ownership battles, caused in part by overlapping claims. He, too, lived to a ripe old age, dying in Juneau in 1907 at the age of seventy-four. George Pilz, the sickly one, lived in Juneau for a time and then bounced around other Alaska gold camps before finally dying in Eagle in 1926 at the age of eighty-one. The town of Juneau outlived them all.