Hello!
I just joined SME last week and wanted to take the opportunity to say hello and hopefully harness some of the collective knowledge here with a few questions.
My name is Sky and I live in Castro Valley with my wife and our 8 year old son. I graduated from UC Berkeley back in 1997 with a degree in Computer Science, and for the last ~30 years have been working as a computer programmer, specializing in writing anti-virus and firewall programs for end user PCs. My family has a mining background, but it didn't last past my grandfather's generation and it wouldn't factor into my life until a few years ago as I shall explain next.
My great grandfather was Walter W. Johnson, a mining and mechanical engineer, shipbuilder, shipwrecker, and BL/M dredge designer/builder. He moved to California in 1905 and, after a short stint as a draughtsman for Natomas, he created the Alta Bert Gold Dredging Company up in Trinity Center, designing and building his first 2 dredges. In 1910 he formed the Union Construction Company and built 3 more dredges that he brought north with him to Nome, where he lived until 1917. He would eventually build over half of the dredges operating in the Yukon and Canda, some 40+ dredges. During WWI he retooled the Union Construction Company to build ships for the US Shipping Board's Emergency Fleet Corporation and built a shipyard in what is now the Outer Harbor of the Port of Oakland, next to what is now the the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza but back then was the Key System Mole. During World War II he was the managing partner of Judson War Industries, a partnership between Judson Pacific, the J Philip Murphy Corp, and his Walter W. Johnson Co. After both wars he operated a family shipwrecking concern in order to procure steel to build more dredges and eventually took over the Pollock-Stockton yard in the Port of Stockton to do the scrapping. As soon as Order L-208 was lifted he resumed gold mining but found it increasingly difficult to turn a profit with the price of gold fixed at $35/oz and the prices of steel and labor ever increasing. He died penniless in 1972, trying to raise capital to finance moving a dredge to a 50 year lease he had on PIne and Otter Creeks in Atlin, BC. Unfortunately nobody wanted to buy his dredges with the price of gold what it was, and he ended up leaving them scattered across North America. Some of the ones still around include the Tuolumne Gold Dredging Co dredge in La Grange, California, the Coal Creek dredge and it's sister dredge the Woodchopper Creek dredge in the Yukon-Charley National Preseve, the Swanberg/Johnson-Pohl dredge in Nome, and Yukon Conolidated Gold Co dredge #12 outside of Whitehorse. Both the Clear Creek dredge and the Thistle Creek dredge, now operated by Tony Beets, were designed by him, along with their sister dredge the Henderson Creek dredge that I am currently trying to locate. My mother and I have visited and documented many of them, including remote ones only reachable by helicopter or boat. I think the sheer number of dredges he left behind is a testimant to the bad timing of his death. It didn't pay to move them anywhere else, so unlike many other dredges of that era, they were never shipped off to South America or Asia.
If anyone is interested in learning more, the below is a presentation we gave at the statewide AMA meeting 2 weeks ago, or you can read his bio on the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQzy7PtnBgChoGZLuJXJw7LNSDQkpdJG/view?usp=sharing
https://alaskamininghalloffame.org/inductees/johnson.php
Anyways, back to recent times, my mother started working on a book about WWJ in 2010 or so. I wasn't really interested in it the endevour until about 4 years ago, when I suppose I reached the age where you begin to think about your place in the world and what you leave behind and found myself much more interested in family history and genealogy and what not. Since then, that interest in family history has grown into a passion for mining, and I am trying to figure out how to also make it into a career. In pursuit of that there are 4 pracitcal areas where I could use some advice/guidance:
1) Perhaps the easiest way to transition to a career in mining is to do what I currently do and work for a software developmenet company that writes software for the mining industry. The company I am most interested in is Kobold Metals, based out of Berkeley, which is using AI to help locate critical minerals. As it is a fully remote job, I can't seem to find an address or phone number, and was hoping somebody might have a contact there that I could message directly. If anyone has any recommendations for other locally based or remote-only mining software companies, I would definitely welcome them.
2) About 2 years ago, we learned that the family still had an interest in 4 patented claims up in Nome, and that one of them had been intentionally mined without telling us by a lessee of the other 50% owner. We have been in mediation for the last year+ and it went nowhere, so we just filed litigation last month. All in all they owe us about 1700 oz of gold for the two years of mining, plus damages. We have an attorney in Alaska that specializes in mining law, but as it turns out his mining cases were more of the order of corporate tax cases, not knock out brawls over tresspass etc, which seems to want a different type of lawyer. It's going well, we are still in the pre-trial phase and haven't yet started discovery. Once we do, however, we will need experts to review the logs, mining plans, financial documents, etc, and to potentially serve as expert witnesses if it goes to trial. So far one of the Tweets up in Nome has been providing us with excellent help, but he is quite busy and overcomitted. I would love to talk to anyone with experience or advice in this type of litigation, or has recommendations for expert witnesses
3) There is still some gold left in the above claim, and there are 3 other claims that were last drifted in the early 1900s and never dredged. With the price of gold what it is, it seems like now is the time to do something about it, but we lack both the equipment and knowledge to get it done. They are all inland Tundra claims, one being on the Third Beach Line. Another a short distance away has shallow but low grade gold. Two more are up on Dexter, one having the last remaining bedrock pay, that pay being 180' down below 2 levels of false bedrock. I would love to talk to anyone that has experience or advice developing properties like these.
4) One of the projects I've been working on over the last year has been cataloging all the properties Walter Johnson owned across California, YT, and Alaska and conducting my own informal title searches on each one. It turns out he still held title to many of them at the time of his death, but many places passed registration laws, requiring one to pay a nominal one time fee for each patented claim they owned, and other places assessing property taxes on the surface use of patented claims. This had the effect of most all of them escheating back to the state and being auctioned off. I did, however, find a fully intact 4.5 cubic ft. dredge last used in 1960 sitting on State land outside of Fairbanks. Due to it's remoteness, all of the buckets, pumps, engines, etc are in place. We talked to DNR and they are willing to let us take ownership of it if we can move it about 1/3rd of a mile away onto private property. We think we can smooth out its tailings bed and move it during the winter, but even this is a massive undertaking. I would love to talk to anyone that might have experience with something like this :)
Last, if there are any mining history buffs here, I would love to just chat or share ephemera etc. I hope to meet many of you at the Spring event.
If there are any other more appropriate forums/discussion boards for these questions, please let me know.
You can email me at skyking@gmail.com or via cell at 415-509-6743, or just reply here.
thanks!
sky
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S King
San Leandro CA United States
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