Editor’s Note: This is the third post in Part V of the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North series edited by Isabelle Gapp and guest edited by Sarah Pickman.
Across Alaska’s frozen hillsides, water once carved the landscape into canals of gold. As part of the fifth installment of Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North, this piece aims to highlight the Fairhaven Ditch on the Seward Peninsula, near the mining boomtown of Nome (surveyed in 1905, constructed 1906-1907) and the Davidson Ditch near Fairbanks in Alaska’s interior (1926-1928), to consider the history of mining labour in Alaska’s northern goldfields. Through comparing and contrasting these projects, I aim to reveal how mining labour evolved from hand-tooled improvisation to increasingly mechanized interactions with the landscape—transformations that are still etched across Alaska’s northern environs.
At these sites hydraulic mining activity utilized high-pressure water, with the force of “a constant succession of cannonballs” channeled through ditches, canvas hoses, and cast-iron monitors, to blast apart gold-bearing soil.1 This process created a slurry that was transported to processing sites for gold extraction. To conduct these operations, vast networks of canals—known as ditches—proved necessary.
As part of the greater Nome gold rush, the scale of these ditch networks fundamentally transformed the Seward Peninsula’s ecology. Crossing the entire peninsula, “forty-two ditches carried more than 52,000 inches of water a total of 569 miles” as of 1909.2 For contrast, this is the approximate distance from San Francisco, California to Portland, Oregon. Of these ditch networks, the largest was Fairhaven, at thirty-eight miles, and the Miocene, at approximately thirty-one miles. Considered the more prominent of the two, the Fairhaven Ditch has been listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, establishing both its economic and historical importance. The Fairhaven Ditch stood at “eleven feet wide at the bottom and ran seemingly endlessly through lava formations and permafrost across the barren landscape.”3 The challenging labour of constructing and maintaining the ditches amid unpredictable seasonal conditions proved strenuous for construction crews. While the actual number of those employed for Fairhaven’s construction is unknown, estimates range around one hundred men.4
Construction crews faced “unimaginable swarms of mosquitoes” that impaired daily operations.5 Though no firsthand accounts of the Fairhaven’s construction have been identified, the Taylor Creek Ditch of 1905, also located near Nome, was documented at the time of its construction and likely had similar construction methods and challenges to that of the Fairhaven.6 The Taylor Creek Ditch had a fast and intensive working season of only three months during the short Alaskan summer. The first step of constructing a ditch involved plowing and removing sod from the tundra, exposing the ground to thawing. Following this, protective materials such as burlap were placed at the bottom of the ditch to prevent erosion and thawing. At the same time, the remaining silt and sod served as a protective barrier. When the ground thawed unevenly, equipment similar to a snowplow was used to grade the ground, pulled by horses. To construct the pumping building needed for operations, ice and frozen gravel served as a base, which was then finished with concrete.7 To prevent heat from fires and machinery from melting the ice and damaging the building, air passages were constructed to regulate the temperature. Against the backdrop of these tumultuous landscapes of permafrost, mosquitoes, and ground ice, operating in these working conditions was a feat itself for the workers.
During the Nome gold rush and into the early years of corporate mining, extraction relied above all on miners’ bodies, aided by simple tools—a reality most visible in the hand-dug ditch networks that crisscrossed the landscape. Fairbanks in the years before dredging looked much the same. As one observer recalled of the Goldstream area specifically in 1922, “they had sluice boxes all over the place. And they had trestles, 30 feet near, 40 feet near, you know, crisscrossing like jack straws and flumes on top of them.”8 Within just a few years, however, this landscape of human labour-driven networks was overtaken by power plants, mechanized dredges, and the vast Davidson Ditch system, which together formed the backbone of Fairbanks’s sociotechnical landscape. While Fairbanks miners also maintained a close relationship with the environment, as in Nome, technological infrastructures and corporate control increasingly mediated that relationship.
By the 1920s, the Fairbanks Exploration Company sought to mechanize mining within Interior Alaska. With its final length of over ninety miles, traversing deep valleys and cutting across permafrost, the Davidson Ditch represented one of the most ambitious infrastructural undertakings in Interior Alaska. More than a canal, it was an industrial artery, mediating the sweeping landscapes of the Tanana Valley through capital, technology, and labour. An engineering marvel, one oral history recounts “[The Davidson Ditch] was put in by horse-drawn slip scrapers and horse-drawn graders and was…more or less one of the I think wonders of the world at that time.”9 Constructed through manual, animal, and machine means, its construction hinged on challenging, or at least adapting to, the unique environment of the Fairbanks region.
Construction began in 1926 and continued for three consecutive summers, concluding in 1928. The work was grueling. Much of the preparatory effort was spent contending with ‘muck,’ a heavy mixture of moss, ice, peat, and fine rock particles that could reach depths of more than 120 feet. Removing this material required sequential steps: clearing surface vegetation, thawing the ground through steam points, and stripping out saturated soils before boulders could be lifted to create a level grade for the canal. Even with tractors and graders, much of this work was done manually. One oral history remembered simply: “That ditch was dug by pick and shovel by thousands of men.”10
The expertise of “old timers” knew local ground were often consulted in the construction process, as they knew “not only the extent of the paystreak but as to other physical conditions surrounding it, such as the nature of bedrock, grades, boulders, etc.”11 Fairbanks miner Rudy Vetter mused “What the old timer did, there is a saying that you must have a nose for ore… They knew the terrain… Certain types of terrain tend to be productive, and others are not.”12
Just as “old timers” demonstrated meaningful relationships with the environment, so too did the ditch workers. Among those who worked on the Davidson, a few specialized roles were required to ensure its operation. Most notably was that of ditch walkers, who “perform routine maintenance chores and to sound the alarm if a serious break occurred in the earthen abutment. He worked and lived by himself, a solitary eagle undaunted by loneliness.”13 It wasn’t just the lone ditch walker who provided ditch maintenance, but at times a fleet of workers. As experienced by point driver Roy Larson, on “5th of May, why, they had a ditch break up on the old Davidson Ditch up at Medicine Creek. It’s up the other side of Long Creek. And so there was about 20 of us went up there and went to work and repairing the ditch break.”14 And maintaining the ditch was no easy task; another account muses “oh yeah, you’ve got to maintain [the ditch]. You keep the brush out of them… I heard at a time or two that the muskrats digging holes in them gave them some trouble.”15 Muskrats, foliage, and the seasons quickly wore down the Davidson, and maintenance became so routine that the longest period it was fully intact was 60 days in 1934.16
The living conditions of these workers proved similar. In the case of the Fairhaven Ditch workers, a multitude of tents and five cabins were constructed to accommodate the large workforce. The remnants of these cabins still litter the tundra, part of the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.17 For the construction of the Davidson Ditch, workers lived in tent camps and “regional camps” which eventually became more permanent facilities.18 By 1926, the Fairbanks Exploration Company operated twenty-two camps, with 1,372 workers–or 80% of Fairbanks’ population at the time. While not all of them worked on the Davidson, a large portion likely did. Following the ditch’s construction, routine maintenance was essential. A specialized role known as “ditch walking” was established, and cabins were built every five to ten miles along the route for the people employed. As of a cultural resource study conducted in 1999, some of these cabins still lie abandoned.19
The afterlives of these ditch networks diverged sharply. The Fairhaven Ditch does not have an exact year of closing, with reports indicating dredge activity in 1918 for the following two years.20 Following this, however, it is unlikely that it was used. Interestingly, the Fairhaven Ditch serves as a connecting entity between Nome and Fairbanks via the Fairbanks Exploration Company. In the 1920s the Fairhaven and Miocene Ditches were used for dredging through the precursor of the Fairbanks Exploration Company, the Hammon Dredge Company. Thus, infrastructure present hundreds of miles away from the Seward Peninsula served as not only some of the first large-scale ditch networks in Alaska, but as a model for the later construction techniques of the Davidson Ditch.
In contrast, the Davidson received a robust afterlife for a few years following the decline of the Fairbanks Exploration Company. Between 1959 and 1967, the Chatanika Hydroelectric Plant operated through the Chatanika Power Company, with multiple former employees of Fairbanks Exploration working there.21 As stated by one oral history from Murdo and Anna McCrae, the “[Chatanika Hydroelectric Plant is] using it because the [Fairbanks Exploration] company don’t use it anymore. ‘Cause, Harry, we’re through here this year, and there won’t be no more dredging in Chatanika.22 However, the flood of 1967 wrecked the ditch’s containment dam, putting an end to the Davidson’s operations.23
The Fairhaven Ditch was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, celebrated as a heritage of early mining infrastructure. Comparatively, following the dismantling of the Davidson Ditch in the 1960s, the rusting pipes and faint embankments are all that remain. While also noted as a historic site within the White Mountains National Recreation Area, its legacy is not memorialized in the same way as the Fairhaven Ditch. This imbalance reflects what Alaska chooses to remember—hand labour romanticized, corporate modernity neglected. This remains the case even though in reality, much of the work on the Davidson Ditch was done by hand by labourers in grueling conditions. Even abandoned, these remnants serve as infrastructural ghosts, reminders of how industry re-routed both water and livelihoods.24
Notes
[1] Campion Mining and Trading Co., Mines Located at Nome, Alaska (Chicago: The Company, 1903), APRCA Digital Repository, 23.
[2] Frank Williss, “Fairhaven Ditch,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form (Denver: National Park Service, Denver Service Center, 1987), 1.
[3] Williss, “Fairhaven Ditch,” 2.
[4] G. Frank Williss, “It’s a Hard Country, Though”: Historic Resource Study, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve (U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1983), 176.
[5] Williss, “Fairhaven Ditch,” 190.
[6] Williss, “It’s a Hard Country, Though,” 176.
[7] “Hydraulic Mining at Nome,” Scientific American, September 13, 1902, Alaska Mining Hall of Fame.
[8] Sam O. White, interview by Neville Jacobs, June 21, 1974, audio recording, Tanana Yukon Historical Society tapes, oral history 76-08-03, Oral History Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
[9] Roy Larson, interview by Jim Madonna, December 31, 1987, sound recording, 95-56-08 side B, Alaska Gold Trails Collection, UAF Oral History Collection, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
[10] Frieda Chamberlain, interview by Tom Farrell, July 6, 1989, sound recording, Oral History 95-56-37 side A, Alaska Gold Trails Collection, UAF Oral History Collection, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
[11] J. C. Boswell, Placer Gold Exploration and Geology, Box 1, Folder 1, Boswell Family Papers, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives.
[12] Del Ackles and Rudy Vetter, interview by Lori Baccus, February 23, 1989, Alaska Gold Trails Collection, sound recording, 1 cassette (about 60 min.), University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives.
[13] Robert H. Redding, Chatanika days, 1930’s (Alaska: R.H. Redding), 3.
[14] Roy A. A. Larson, interview by Gayle Maloy, February 22, 1985, Fairbanks, Alaska, audio recording, interview 87-82-15, KFAR Meet a Pioneer tapes, Oral History Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
[15] Joseph E. Vogler, interview by Jim Madonna, April 1, 1988, Alaska Gold Trails Collection (95-56-15 Side A), sound recording, 1 cassette (about 60 min.), University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives.
[16] Catherine M. Williams, Joshua D. Reuther, and Peter M. Bowers, History of the Davidson Ditch North of Fairbanks, Alaska (Fairbanks: Northern Land Use Research, Inc., February 2004).
[17] Williss, “It’s a Hard Country, Though,” 177.
[18] Catherine M. Williams and Sarah McGowan, The Davidson Ditch (Fairbanks, AK: Fairbanks Gold Mining, Inc., 2005), 2, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
[19] Stacie J. McIntosh and Tracie A. Krauthoefer, The Davidson Ditch in 1999-2000: Report of Current Status (Alaska Centennial Gold Rush Task Force and Bureau of Land Management, 2000), Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 80.
[20] “Fairhaven Ditch,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory–Nomination Form, 1987, National Park Service, 3, accessed October 20, 2024, https://npshistory.com/publications/bela/nr-fairhaven-ditch.pdf.
[21] Murdo McCrae and Anna McCrae, interview by Harrie Hughes and Judy Eric, June 1, 1963, sound recording, Oral History 02-00-62-30, Harrie Hughes Collection, UAF Oral History Collection, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ned Rozell, “90-Mile Aqueduct Still Etched in Interior Hills,” Alaska Science Forum, September 26, 2013, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, accessed October 20, 2024, https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/90-mile-aqueduct-still-etched-interior-hills.
Feature image: Fairhaven Ditch near Imuruk Lake, Seward Peninsula, Alaska. Photographed during the Alaska Task Force survey of historical mining infrastructure, early 1970s. Chukchi–Imuruk file unit, Alaska Task Force Photographs, Record Group 79: Records of the National Park Service. National Archives and Records Administration (Identifier 42197817).
These mining operations took place on the traditional territories of the Sitŋasuaq (Iñupiaq) on the Seward Peninsula and the Troth Yeddha’ (Dena) of the lower Tanana River. Including Alaska Native perspectives helps provide a fuller understanding of mining heritage.
Rowan Goldman
Latest posts by Rowan Goldman (see all)
- Digging Ditches, Reworking Labour: Fairhaven and Davidson - October 30, 2025