Hatcher Pass & Independence Mine

Sixteen wood-frame buildings, once joined by covered wooden tunnels so the miners never had to go outside.

The Independence Mines, now Independence Mine State Historical Park, sit in the Talkeetna Mountains across Hatcher Pass from Palmer, Alaska. Mining here goes back to at least 1897, when active claims were reported around Fishook Creek. Those early efforts were eventually combined into the Wasilla Mining Company, which worked the ground from 1934 to 1943 and again from 1948 to 1950. It was the second-largest hard-rock gold operation in Alaska, behind only a larger site near Juneau. The US Geological Survey lists it as a past producer of gold and silver and records a long string of former names for it, among them the Alaska Gold Quartz Company, the Alaska Free Gold Mining Company and the Carle Prospect.

The camp survives because of how it ended. When the company stopped in 1950 it expected to come back and never did, so the equipment and buildings were left standing rather than stripped. That has left an unusually complete collection of mining plant, although the weather has been hard on the buildings since. The camp went onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and the land was donated to the state in 1980, which made it a historic park.

It was not quite finished as a mine. Underground work resumed in 1979 under Coronado Mining, run by Starkey Wilson and Chuck Hawley, with the intention of putting the mill and the operation on the Willow side, away from the park. Enserch Corporation of Dallas took a half share in 1981, and that year extensive underground exploration stockpiled 3,000 tons of ore grading half an ounce to the ton. The mine, about 70 miles north of Anchorage, has produced more than 165,500 ounces of gold in total.

The geology is straightforward once you know where to look. The ore sits in quartz veins filling shear zones that run north-northwest along the southern edge of the Talkeetna Batholith.