Alaska Mining Rush of '79...and now it's time again — Page 1 of 5
There used to be a time in Alaska — and the Far West— when the Captains of Industry on Wall Street farted after overindulging in their, “me, me, me,” and sails would fill sending crude whipsawed vessels filled with argonaughts on their way with a big hurrah across Marsh Lake, stampeding to the Klondike.

I know the demographics of the crowd, having been a stampeder to Moab, Utah, in 1955, and again on the Alaska Rush of ‘79. I had spent time prior to that preparing for the coming upswing in the back seat of a helicopter reading instruments on big company base mineral prospects in the Kuskokwim, and out of Hyder in South East Alaska. From this experience I learned that it really was about the small miner. Really, really, big multinational companies do not like prices raising rapidly, as this makes it much more expensive to acquire mineral prospects.

With the run-up of gold prices in 1978 I too decided to find and stake my own property. Doing it the old fashioned way, I even found myself and my “partners,” a grubstake of an outfit that included two suction dredges, inflatable boats, outboard engines, and grub and gas.

Eventually I will do a major piece on that Innoko summer that was a heck of a lot of fun, but not that beneficial to my long term retirement fund. We did end up staking very valid claims, that proved very valuable. But, not for us.