80 ALASKAN MINERAL RESOURCES IN 1906. 
a deposit 150 by 200 feet in lateral dimensions, though no well-defined 
limits have yet been reached. At the upper workings, 800 feet to 
the west, investigations were made in 1905 by a 75-foot shaft and 
drifts almost entirely in gypsum, but no further work has been done. 
Shipments from this mine began in May, and several cargoes of 
rock have been delivered to the plaster mill at Tacoma, where it is 
prepared for the market. 
MARKET. 
Gypsum is in much demand along the Pacific coast as wall plaster, 
fertilizer, and in the manufacture of cement. The Puget Sound 
market is supplied in large measure from the deposits in Kansas, 
Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The California market is supplied 
by local deposits and those in Nevada and Utah. Transportation 
from these points to the seaboard cities costs from $4 to $7 per ton,! 
and the present market prices in these cities of first-grade gypsum 
products are as follows: Crude, $5 to $7 per ton; land plaster, $6 to I 
$8 per ton; plaster of Paris, $8 to $11 per ton; wall plaster, $9 to $12 
per ton. a 
CEMENT. 
The demand for cement all along the Pacific coast is rapidly increas- 
ing, but deposits of raw materials for this industry along the Alaskanu 
coast are of little value. The reason for this, in the first place, is t he i 
high cost of the fuel necessary for its manufacture. The difficulty^ 
in obtaining efficient and cheap labor, as compared with the Puget 
Sound area and California, must also be considered, and the long 
haul necessary to the market is unfavorable to such an industry. 
To ship the cement rock as mined to a cement factory established 
somewhere near the point of coal supply and the market would be 
the most feasible mode of procedure ; but to do this would bring little 
or no profit, as vast areas of cement rock are exposed in the proximity 
of all the larger cities and can supply the cement plants along the 
coast for many years to come. 6 
COATj. 
The most extensive explorations for coal in southeastern Alaska ; 
have been at Kootznahoo Inlet and Murder Cove, on Admiralty 
Island, and at Hamilton Bay, on Kupreanof Island. At these locali- 
ties the coal-bearing formations are Tertiary in age and made up oi 
a For descriptions of the gypsum deposits of the United States, introduced by a discussion on the 
geology, technology, and statistics of gypsum, see Adams, G. I., and others, Gypsum deposits of the 
United States: Bull. U. S. Geol. Survey No. 223, 1904. 
b For a discussion of the distribution of cement materials and its industry in the United States, s& 
Eckel, E. C, Cement materials and industry of the United States: Bull. U. S. Geol. Survey No. 243 
1905. 
