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Show Mil BIG DREDGES BUSYJN ALASKA Ordinary Placer Mining Also Active; Farm Resources Being Developed. J. E. Teeter, a director of the Minook Gold Dredging company of Alaska, and a well-known Alaskan mining man, was in the city yesterday on his wav to the north. He says that dredging the streams that are tributary to the Yukon and other Alaskan rivers, is now an established es-tablished industry, and that in all there are in the neighborhood- of forty plants at work at the present time there. These dredges cost all the way from $125;000 to $160,000 and -wash out an immense amount of gravel in the course of a season. The season for dredging is also verv much longer than for the ordinary placer mining done in. the north, as the streams thaw out . very much sooner than the land on either bank, giving a good month more of washing than the old method. Output Wilt Grow. In speaking of the gold production of Alaska, Mr. Teeter says that it will I continue to grow for "many years to come, and that the dredging machines in themselves will be a great factor in making the increase possible. One dredging machine, owned bv the Gug-genheims, Gug-genheims, cost $160,000 to place on, the ground, and in seven days' dredging recovered re-covered enough, gold to pay for the machine. ma-chine. lie eays that the old-fashioned placer mining of the countrv is not falling off at all, but is on the increase. The greatest interest at the present time is centered in the Shushana river district, where placer and dredge mining will be in operation during the present season. This district was recentlv surveyed by the engineers of the geological survey, and they report that there are over $25,000,000 in the ground, with the possibility pos-sibility of those figures being doubled. Farming Increasing. -Ir. Teeter has been in Alaska for man- years, and says that it is developing develop-ing into something of an agricultural country, and that the dav is past when all the supplies needed -fay t::e miner; has to be shipped in from the south. Though the seasons are short, the growth is so rapid that most of the temperate tem-perate zone vegetables sod many of the grains can be matured. The 'grazing possibilities of the countrv- are also coming to the front, and it is Incoming a sheep and cattle country. This aids mining to a marked degree, and ho expects ex-pects that the production of copper as well as gold will be doubled within the next live year?. Mr. Teeter will leave for the north in a few days and expects to be dred-ging - by August 1. |