![]() ![]() In 1979 the camp was added to the National Register of Historic places. The camp remained dormant until being sold in 1976 to Robert Galeoto and his wife, who developed the property into a resort, converting one of the buildings into a restaurant. 3 continued to operate until 1963 when, due to increasing operating costs and low gold prices, it shut down. Except for a brief period during World War II when all the area dredges were idled, that dredge worked Cleary Creek until 1947, when it was moved to Little Eldorado Creek and later to Dome Creek.ĭredge No. 5 was put into service a year later to take advantage of placer-gold deposits along upper Cleary Creek. 3 still sits about a mile west of the camp, across the highway from Chatanika Lodge.ĭredge No. That was the same year that the Davidson Ditch, which channeled water from the upper Chatanika River for dredging operations, was completed. 3 began operations at the old Chatanika townsite in 1928. This is understandable since two dredges churned the Cleary Creek gravels. Between 19 it built an operations camp about half-way between Chatanika and Cleary City.Īccording to National Register of Historic Places documents, the camp at Chatanika was the largest one the FE Co. ![]() One of the first areas developed by the FE Co. ![]() The company began buying placer claims and doing preparatory work for bringing in gold dredges, which could take advantage of what was left in the area - large, low-grade, placer-gold deposits. However, after the Alaska Railroad was completed in 1923 and heavy equipment could be freighted to Fairbanks, the FE Co. The first mines in the area were drift mines that began petering out in the 1910s when higher-concentration placer-gold deposits were exhausted. The town of Chatanika was near the creek’s mouth, and Cleary City sat a few miles to the northeast. It was one of the richest gold-bearing streams around Fairbanks and supported two mining camps. Co.) operations base for gold dredging along Cleary Creek.Ĭleary Creek is an eight-mile-long stream running northwesterly from Cleary Summit to the Chatanika River. The camp used to be the Fairbanks Exploration Company’s (FE. On a southeast-facing hill just north of Mile 27.5 of the Steese Highway sits Chatanika Gold Camp. ![]()
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