The Klondike region includes approximately the area lying on the east side of the Yukon River between the Klondike River on the north and the Indian River on the south. The gold is found in gravel deposit.; along the courses of the small streams. sonree has been presumed to he the quartz veins which occur in the sehists of the neighboring hills, but no gold-bearing quartz., in quantity at least, has yet been found in situ in the region. Nost of the gold has been mined from the river-bed deposits. But in many places the terraces which lie 50 feet or more above the streams have been found sufficiently rich to re pay working. The values are usually concen trated along bed-rock. sometimes impregnating the latter to the depth of a foot. Except for a few feet near the surface the ground is frozen throughout the 3-ear, and the work of thawing and excavation is extremely difficult and tedious. The gravels are washed during the summer months, usually in short sluices. The total pro duction of the Klondike district from ISM to 1902 inclusive was approximately $80,000,000.
The Nome district, which is next in importance to the Klondike, is situated on the southern side of Seward Peninsula, at the entrance to Norton Sound. The first discoveries were made in the
summer of ISOS, and the next year witnessed the establishment of Nome City, and the development of mining into an important industry. A pe culiar feature of the district is that the gold occurs not only in the creek and bench deposits of the small valleys, but it is also food in the gravels of the coastal plain, which is a tundra, and even more extensively in the beach sands. The creek deposits are similar in character to those occurring in the Klondike. A large num ber of the small streams that drain the southern side of the peninsula have been worked, includ ing Anvil, Cripple, Eldorado, Ophir, Solomon, and Kugruk creeks, each of which gives its name to a local district. The coastal plain in the vicinity of Nome is covered with a heavy growth of moss, and beneath this there are layers of gravel from 40 to SO feet thick which carry gold. The methods employed in mining these deposits are similar to those used in working the creek gravels. Most of the excavation is done with the aid of steam for thawing the frozen gravels. The production of the Nome district from its dis covery to the close of 1902 was about $20,000,000.