collier.] GEOGRAPHY. 11 
compiled in 1&02 and 1903 by E. C. Barnard/' of the United States 
Geological Survey, but has some minor corrections and additions from 
data obtained by Mr. Paige and the writer. 
References to coal outcrops are not uncommon in some of the earlier 
writings on travel and exploration in Alaska, but up to 1895 no sys- 
tematic attempt had been made to gather this information together. 
In that year Dall visited many of the localities where coal occurs in 
the Pacific coast province of Alaska, and in the report b based on this 
investigation included a summary of all the available data in regard to 
the coal in the interior. In the following year Spurr visited a number 
of the coal prospects on the Yukon and embodied descriptions of them 
in his report/* During the years from 1898 to 1902 information in 
regard to coal in Alaska was gathered by the various parties of the 
United States Geological Survey working in the district, and also by 
members of the Canadian survey in the adjacent parts of the Yukon 
Territory. Brooks summarized all this information in a report'' 
which also contained a provisional table of correlation of the coal- 
bearing horizons. 
It will be the purpose of the following report to summarize the 
economic results of the present investigation of the coals of the Yukon 
and to consider briefly their commercial bearing, while the discussion 
of the more purely scientific problems will be left for another report. 
It is hoped that this report, in spite of its incompleteness, may aid 
the development of coal mining on the Yukon, which must be of 
importance in connection with the exploitation of the other resources 
of this northern region. 
GEOGRAPHY. 
The Yukon is the largest river of Alaska and one of the largest on 
the continent. It has a length, from its mouth to the source of its 
longest tributary, of about 2,400 miles, of which 1,300^ miles are in 
Alaska (see map, PI. I). It empties into Bering Sea, and its head- 
waters lie far to the southeast, in British Columbia. Its drainage 
basin includes a large, irregularly shaped area, roughly blocked out 
by the Rocky Mountain system on the north and east and by ranges 
of the Pacific/ mountain system on the south and west. To the south- 
« Brooks, Alfred H., The geography of Alaska: Prof. Paper U. S. Geol. Survey No. — (not yet 
published). 
bDall, William H., Report on coal and lignite of Alaska: Seventeenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, 
pt. 1, 1896, pp. 769-908. 
c Spurr, J. E., Geology of the Yukon gold district: Eighteenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, pt. 3 ( 
1898, pp, 101-391. 
d Brooks, Alfred H., Coal resources of Alaska: Twenty-second Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, pt. 3, 
1902, pp. 515-571. 
eThe U. S. Coast Survey (see Route Map of Yukon River, Chart No. 3098) estimates the distance by 
river from St. Michael to Dawson at 1,313 miles. River pilots and steamboat men estimate the same 
distance at above 1,900 miles. The actual distance probably falls between these estimates. 
/Brooks, Alfred H., Geography of Alaska: Prof. Paper U. S. Geol. Survey No. — . 
