ptkington] GRAVEL AND PLACER MINING IN ALASKA. 255 
IjEGAL CONDITIONS IN 1904.« 
INTRODUCTION. 
After an investigation of the present conditions in the new so-called 
Fairbanks district of Alaska, situated on Tanana River, I was forci- 
bly impressed with the urgent need of a change in the present location 
law, which allows the location of placer tracts by representation. An 
individual holding twenty or fifty powers of attorney from other citi- 
zens of the United States may go alone into a wild and unknown dis- 
trict and, by staking claims, each of 20 acres, tie up whole creek 
valleys which are by this process withdrawn from the area of public 
lands for a period generally amounting to eighteen months. 
The location of the claims is then recorded in the nearest recording 
office in the names of the men who may be in San Francisco, Chicago, 
or New York. The ownership of the claims may afterwards be changed 
ad libitum by the passing of quitclaim deeds. The locator can have, 
under the law, but one claim by right of location on each creek; but 
by exercising the right of representation he withdraws from the pub- 
lic domain as many miles of creek beds as he can traverse and stake. 
On each claim he is required to do no work, beyond sinking a small 
discovery shaft, for the remainder of the year in which the location is 
made and up to the end of the ensuing year. Thus in any placer 
district in which the auriferous gravels have an economic value, and 
into which prospectors are continually pouring, as in the new Fair- 
banks district, many bona fide miners willing to search for gold to the 
extent of their physical and financial resources are rendered powerless 
through circumstances which they can in no way control or by any 
possibility foresee. 
These men, willing to undergo the discomforts of an inhospitable 
country, either find themselves idle in a remote community, where liv- 
ing is expensive, or are compelled to make journeys of four or five 
days 1 duration from the base of supplies, and pack their provisions, 
blankets, and tools on their backs to find ground that has not been 
staked. 
It may be objected that each man has an equal opportunity to reach 
a given piece of ground first. This, however, is hardly the case. The 
resources of the men who unite to send an individual to locate for them 
by power of attorney are generally greater than those of the individ- 
ual who singly goes out with the purpose of locating one claim for his 
own operations. The power-of -attorney man, equipped with a better 
outfit and very likely dogs or horses, can go farther and stay longer 
than the prospector of limited resources. 
a I have discussed at some length the legal conditions of mining and the abuses prevailing under 
the present law in Alaska in a report made to the "Public Lands Commission " recently appointed 
by the President. In the same report I have embodied suggestions for a revision of the present law 
as far as it pertains to placer mines in Alaska. 
