The McCarty Mine was originally named the American Eagle mine and a shaft was dropped about 450 ft deep during the winter of 1914-15.  A man by the name of Lew McCarty along with his sons worked the mine where it currently is on Fairbanks Creek.  It is mainly a gold mine.

Apparently, there are three levels in the mine: 28 ft, 135 ft, and 235 ft with a total of 3,000 ft of workings.

Back in the day, it was costly to ship ore to the nearest mill for processing.   The McCarty mill solved this issue by purchasing a 2-stamp press and they then processed their own ore.  The stamp mill has a capacity of 10 tons per day.  Each of the stamps weighs about 1,500 pounds and can make 72 strokes per minute.

In 1941, a record was made on the mine by a Henry R. Joesting Associate Mining Engineer.  He said that a crew of 13 men were currently employed that the mine and they include, “five miners, a trammer and foreman work a single eight hour shift underground, six days a week.  A hoistman and trammer work the corresponding eight hour shift on the surface.  Four men are employed in the mill, which runs three daily shifts, seven days a week, and one man is employed in the assay office.”

The mine has a hoist house, change room, mess house, bunk house, and assay house.  At the time of the article, 100 cases of explosives were stored across the creek.  Total extraction of gold from the McCarty Mine workings is estimated to be about 60,000 ounces!

For more information, check out this article from the Fairbanks News Miner newspaper.

More links about the McCarty Mine: Mc Carty Mine, Fairbanks District, Alaska.

USGS Article about the McCarty Mine

Currently, the underground workings are inaccessible.  A few friends and I hiked all over the forest and found tailings but no clear evidence of the location of the shaft or other tunnels. We did find the stamp mill, cabin, outhouse, another storage shack, and a broken warehouse that was probably built in the 1970s or 1980s.

The trail is almost completely overgrown now and if you walked by the trailhead you would probably not even know anything was there.

It is a short walk to the stamp mill and rest of the buildings.

The stamp mill is really neat to see even though the building is crumbling and will soon be completely destroyed from just the normal effects of the elements.  The stamps are still there and it’s crazy to think that the stamps were crushing ore 24 hours a day at one point.  The mill’s roof has fallen down in some spots and I would highly recommend not even going inside any of the buildings.

We walked up to the cabin and found a cooler, bedding, and some recent food receipts which tells me that someone was squatting there.  The cabin was falling apart as well but the cabin looked like it was built in the 70s or 80s.

We followed what we thought was a trail and passed by a very small short structure.  The trail circled around and we found some large piles of different colored rocks which hinted to me that the mine opening was nearby.  We never found the mine opening but figured it was here.

Next, we explored the broken warehouse and didn’t really find anything interesting.   It looked like it was just a storage area.