Alaska Mining Rush of '79...and now it's time again— Page 2 of 5
By the second season trying to raise working capital for needed development, while only having 49% ownership, the claims were lost for a lack of assessment work. As as happened so often in my family’s mining career —twice to my uncle at Dawson, and Nome, my father at Teller, and myself having had my name on an exploration target that produced $86 million in gold— someone else benefitted from our initial exploration.

I finally came up with two world class properties, but you know, at 68-years old, I still want grab a pan and head for the hills to strike it rich. Living history; fulfilling my genetic memory.

Is the small miner, main-chance cycle on the upswing once again? Do the math. The Klondike rush started in 1897. The Kobuck in 1919. Jump to the late thirty’s, and the boom that brought me into the business in the mid-fifty's. The late seventies, early eighties, showed the potential of cycle power — but was shortchanged by the Hunt brothers attempt to corner the silver market.

My sense of why today's predictable upturn in mining has been delayed is been that houses have became the poker chips for those looking for 20 to 60% return on their “hard earned” money. What has been labeled M4 by economists also been shown to only benefit the paper money people —Wall Street investment bankers, prestigious national accounting firms, account churning stockbrokers and their partners in crime the high-priced CEOs they pay off with golden parachutes of millions, to take a functioning big board corporation into bankruptcy.

Oops, better not get started on this, as skookum Bobby Magee Murray who attracted my attention during my last — and final— fling as a bachelor has taken over being editor-in-chief of the Murray Mining Magazine “empire,” and my instructions were to keep it brief. Since she was smart enough to develop a prospect on her own, and sell it to Amoco, I differ to her wisdom.