Album: Bremner Historic Mining District, Wrangell-St. Elias NPP, Alaska

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

The Bremner Historic Mining District is located approximately 30 miles southwest of the town of McCarthy in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The District is a regionally significant gold mining landscape, discovered and developed in the early to mid-twentieth century during the Klondike Gold Rush and Great Depression eras. Encompassing approximately 14,000 acres in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, south-central Alaska, the District occupies a mountain pass between the North Fork of the Bremner River and Monahan Creek in the Chugach Mountains. Significant elements of the Bremner Historic Mining District include an important placer mining site and associated camp sites, four discrete lode-gold mines, a mill site, a well preserved transportation network and numerous historic archaeological sites associated with placer and lode-gold mining. The period of significance for the Bremner Historic Mining District is 1901 through 1942. The ‘Maze’ site, which contains a campsite, an elaborate ditch system, and extensive piles of hand-stacked cobble, provides one of the best examples in the Park of non-mechanized, placer mining systems. The Yellow Band Mining Camp is one of the region’s most complete camps, containing not only the typical housing and office facilities, but also a sophisticated hydroelectric system which provided electricity to the entire valley, including the more remote mine sites. The Grand Prize, Sheriff, and Yellow Band Mines are all outstanding examples of remote, lode-gold mining operations, each containing a variety of buildings and structures associated with early to mid-century lode-gold mining operations. In addition all three sites have remnants of tramway systems that were used to transport men material and ore from the valley floor to the mine sites. The remote location of these three mining sites has played a significant role in the preservation of character and artifacts associated with them. They are all located approximately 2000 ft. above the valley floor, access is difficult and in some cases dangerous. As such few Park visitors make it to these sites, and as cultural resources they remain remarkably well preserved. The Lucky Girl Mill and Mine site contains an un-collapsed adit (sealed) and assay shed, as well as a collapsed mill structure. While the Lucky Girl Mill structure has been reduced to ruins by avalanches, its operating machinery remains largely intact, and in most cases in situ, providing the Park with a textbook example of the flow processes of early to mid-century load-gold quartz mills. The Bremner District is a historic vernacular landscape with exceptional historical integrity that preserves a broad spectrum of mining technologies and infrastructure, existing as standing structures, surface remains, isolated artifacts, and archaeological sites. In the absence of major disturbances, the District is an exceptional example of a small-scale mining landscape, rarely so well preserved.