The Northern Gold Fleet:
Twentieth-Century Gold Dredging in Alaska
By Clark C. Spence
The Northern Gold
Fleet is the story of how new gold-dredging technology was applied to the rich
placers of the Far North from 1899 to the present, leading to mass production and
economies of scale that made previously unprofitable resources profitable.
A comprehensive history, it is part environmental, part technological, part corporate,
part labor, and part Alaskan in its thrust, offering a picture -- both dazzling and
absorbing -- of how new technology simultaneously helped
build the economy and lay waste the resources of Alaska.
Clark Spence, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, is the author of The Conrey Placer Mining Company.
Published May 1996
336 pages. 6 x 9 inches. 20 photographs.
Cloth
Order this book |