Denali, and the Effects of Gold Mining in the Kantishna Hills

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Mining has played an important role in Alaska's national parks, but has left scars and contamination behind that. The Park Service is working to clean up mining. Brought awareness to the vast beauty of the state and contributed iconic structures such as the Kennecott Mill and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The Gold Rush of 1897 and 1898 is commemorated in Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.

It brought hundreds of people north into the wilds of Alaska and Canada as opportunities diminished. In Dawson City, Yukon, these pioneers chased gold in Nome and spread out into the interior of Alaska. Looking for riches and adventure? I'm Jason EPPerson. And today on America's National Parks, El Dorado Treasure. Tragedy and triumph in the Kantishna Hills, the story of gold mining in the creeks of Denali and the effects that continue today. The bulk of today's episode comes from the free, award-winning Alaska Park Science, a periodic journal published by the National Park Service Alaska Regional Office. The journal reports information from ongoing and recently completed research in and around Alaska's National parklands.

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In 1903, James Wickersham and several other men attempted the first ascent of North America's highest peak, although they were unsuccessful. Wickersham discovered gold in the stream gravels in the northern Kantishna Hills, in what is now Denali National Park and Preserve. On his way back to Fairbanks the following year, gold was found on Friday and Eureka Creeks setting off a stampede by several thousand miners to the Kantishna Hills. Most of the stampeders left the new district by early 1906, as it became obvious that only a few streams carried paying quantities of gold. People involved in mining operations and related geological and transportation activities helped bring the exceptional scenery and wildlife of the Denali area to the public's attention.

Widely publicized mountaineering expeditions, along with naturalist Charles Sheldon's early efforts to protect the area's wilderness and wildlife, led Congress to establish Mount McKinley National Park back in 1917. Renamed Denali National Park in 1980.

The mining of antimony, a semi-metal used to increase the hardness of alloys in batteries, machine bearings and auto parts, continued in Slate Creek. But deregulation of the price of gold in 1972 brought about a major resurgence of placer mining in the 1970s and 1980s. Placer mining is when you remove gold by sifting through quantities of gravel and sand from a riverbed, it's essentially gold panning instead of cutting into rock, but it can be done on a very large scale, with large equipment. Placer mining involving heavy equipment occurred in Moose Creek, while similar operations using mostly hand tools occurred in El Dorado Creek, one of its tributaries.

Expansion of Denali National Park and Preserve in 1980 brought those mines and placer deposits within park boundaries and ended major mining operations in the Kantishna Hills, although some placer mining does continue to this day. The mining legacy remains in the many miners and their descendants that operate lodges and other visitor services. And in the many historic mining structures and features that remain not as visible as the old mining area buildings and equipment. But critical to park resource conservation are changes mining made to stream channels, aquatic habitats and water quality mining. Channelized El Dorado Creek, which reduces available habitat for aquatic insects, fish spawning and rearing, channelization and removal of large rocks and natural debris from mining.

Reduced habitat complexity Land stripped of vegetation for mining erodes more easily and allows fine sediments to wash into streams. That can fill in pores. Among gravels. That are important to developing fish eggs, as well as providing aquatic insect habitat. Water scientists measure something called turbidity, which is how easily light passes through water, as a way to describe the amount of fine sediments suspended in the water. Increased turbidity leads to decreased invertebrate density, which are fundamental to stream food webs, and can also cause fish mortality. Physical and physiological damage, fish avoidance of turbid areas, and a shift in local aquatic species abundance and composition. In 1994, the EPA designated Slate Creek as an impaired waterway from its headwaters to its confluence with El Dorado Creek because of excess sediment caused by erosion of old mine tailings.

To reduce these effects, reclamation projects in 1997 and 1998, and again in 2010, included the removal of mining debris and tailings from the floodplain. Recontouring the slopes around the creek and restructuring the stream channel. These efforts dramatically reduced erosion, and later testing showed that the stream was meeting water quality standards. Biologists conducted electrofishing surveys, where fish are stunned as they swim between an electrical current. It's safer than it sounds. They recover from it after a few minutes.

Throughout the summer of 1982 to inventory arctic grayling abundance and distribution in the Kentishina Hills, Arctic grayling are fish that can get up to 3 pounds and 20 inches. They have a large, sail-like dorsal fin and colorful body markings. The grayling comes in a wide array of colors. Their dorsal fins are typically fringed in red and dotted with large iridescent red, aqua or purple spots.

Researchers found Eldorado Creek above the confluence had the highest arctic grayling densities of all streams sampled in the Kentishina Hills, suggesting that while the quality of grayling habitat below Slate Creek was poor, fish were still able to move through it to reach Upper Eldorado, where there was no mining remnants.

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Mining had been dormant for several years on Slate Creek when the 1982 fish survey was conducted, but placer mining was active at the mouth of Eldorado Creek. Despite this activity, arctic grayling were distributed throughout Eldorado Creek. But the following year, the Slate Creek mine became active again, and no further surveys were done until 2017, when suction dredging was active on Eldorado Creek, suction dredging is pretty much what it sounds like. Utilizing a high-powered floating vacuum, the miner dives to the bottom of the stream and uses a hose to suck up gravel and sediment.

The dredged material is then discharged through a sluice box on the back of the floating dredge, capturing the gold and spewing sediment and gravel back into the water. Dredge miners chew their way through the bed of the stream using their dredge, along with crowbars, picks, hammers and chisels, to break up the bedrock in search of small flecks of gold. Eight fish surveys were conducted between 2017 and 2019, and no fish were detected in Eldorado at all. Until 2016. No mining had occurred within the watershed for over 30 years. However, habitat below the confluence with Slate Creek was scarred with a significantly disturbed channel.

Water quality degradation from Slate Creek and naturally mineralized springs along Eldorado Creek continues to contribute heavy metals like arsenic, antimony and iron into the creek. The 2017-2018 study indicates a number of factors that have influenced grayling, presence, abundance and movement in the Eldorado watershed. Primarily, the destruction of their habitat and poor water quality, both could be improved, though, through restoration efforts.

In the spring of 2014, a massive rainstorm hit the Kantishna area, washing out roads and changing the course of many streams and rivers in the area. At the Slate Creek Mine site, a channel constructed to keep water away from the main ore deposit, completely failed. After showing signs of deterioration for the previous three years, the stream returned to its pre-reclamation position in the valley, and many of the erosion control structures were washed away. In 2017, the National Park Service, in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management and a company called Stream Mechanics, surveyed unmined streams in the Slate Creek-Eldorado Creek Watershed.

Stream width, depth, area, bed material sizes and slope were measured and used to determine how much water they could transport. To determine what a naturally functioning stream in the area should look like, the team evaluated channel stability and aquatic habitat by measuring physical characteristics like pool and riffle spacing. These measurements were repeated on sections of Slate Creek that have been impacted by mining or that were modified to provide access to the mine site. By comparing the measurements of the disturbed areas versus the natural areas, we can quantify the amount of change that has taken place in the stream. We could also use this information to create a restoration design for returning the stream to a more natural, stable state.

Analysis of that information led to the development of alternative stream restoration designs that the park is evaluating for cost and feasibility. The hope is to create a robust approach for restoring natural function, to slate creek and improve habitat to facilitate the recovery of native aquatic species. The project has provided a model for evaluating all the major mine sites in the park over the next several years. Understanding the potential for recovery in these streams will help the National Park Service to prioritize those areas where intervention is needed, over those areas that are recovering naturally, where disturbance might do more harm than good. This approach to stream restoration will serve to improve stream habitat in the park, where the legacy of mining has left its mark.

The article, El Dorado Treasure, Tragedy and Triumph in the Kantishna Hills, was written by Paul Berger, Chad Holtz and Shannon Kuykendall of the National Park Service and Andrew Kirby of Arizona State University. The issues in this remote creek watershed highlight the incredible human imprint on the natural environment and the work it takes to restore them. This episode of America's National Parks was hosted by me, Jason Epperson, and if you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving us a rating and a review. If you're new here, make sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes delivered to your feed. If you're looking for photos and tips about visiting national parks, check out our America's National Parks Facebook group. And if you're interested in RV travel, we hope you'll also check out our RV Miles podcast and YouTube channel.

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