July 16, 1896
“‘During all the years I have lived in Juneau, Alaska,’ said E. Valentine to the San Francisco Call, ‘I have never had a miner ask me for anything to eat. It is wrong to suppose that they have suffered. With two exceptions, I do not think I ever saw a man return to Juneau from ‘beyond the divide’ with less than $50. And I have seen miners come in with dust worth from that amount all the way up to $40,000 or $50,000.
‘The two men that came out broke were a couple of fellows I staked. They had bad luck. Their waterwheels were carried away in a freshet and they lost what they had. The fact that the miners always go back again speaks well for the Yukon region. All of them do better than they could in the same time anywhere else.
‘A man came into Juneau the other day with seventy-six pounds of gold dust, the result of two seasons in the Yukon region. Mail carriers get $1 apiece for carrying letters between Juneau and the Yukon mines. They usually make up a package of about 500 letters for a trip.
‘The miners that will stay in that region can work up until the middle of October, but those who are coming out will have to quit work a month earlier in order to cross the divide before the heavy snows. Juneau is just as good a country as I want to live in. I like it as well as any place I have ever seen. It rains a good deal. The average rainfall is nine feet a year.'”
(The Dodge County Citizen – Beaver Dam, Dodge County, Wisconsin)
