Dunkle, the apprentice

The following is the first of two excerpts from Wesley Earl Dunkle: Alaska’s Flying Miner, recently published by Boulder-based University Press of Colorado. The 274-page book was written by Charles Caldwell Hawley, a geologist who spent 37 years working in various mines in Alaska. The book retails for US$34.95 in hardcover and is available at Chapters and Indigo bookstores or Amazon.com.

Edward Earl Dunkle’s sequence of academic education followed by practical work in the mines was a standard pathway to professional mining careers until nearly the present day. It was a practice carried forward from the Royal Mining School at Freiburg in northeastern Germany, where young engineers attended classes in the morning and worked in the mines and mills of the historic mining district in the afternoon. In the U.S., Anaconda Co. led the industry when, in 1900, Horace V. Winchell engaged the first professional staff of geologists.

For years Anaconda put newly hired geologists and engineers underground with an experienced miner for a several-month training course. Dunkle’s intensive post-college apprenticeship in geology and mining lasted from Aug. 1908 until late 1911.

He was at the crew training camp at Gales Ferry, Conn., where he received some tongue-in-cheek encouragement from his brother, Dane. He was in New York and sent Earl a postcard of the Nathan Hale statue in City Park: “Be good & you may have one of these some day,” signed brother Dane. By early August, Earl was at the Canisteo open-pit iron mine in Coleraine, Minn. At Coleraine Earl began a practice of informing family members of his whereabouts and projects through letters and postcards:

Dear Father,

I received the books and your letter a few days ago. Let me answer a few of your questions. Coleraine has a population of about 600 or 700. …We are about 85 miles from Duluth, on a branch of the Duluth, Mesabi, and Northern. …The railroad tracks lead out to the slushing dump. …All this ore up here lies under a bed of glacial gravel which is from 30 to 80 ft. thick and must be removed before the ore can be got at. …Last month over 400,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel was removed from these pits. This will some day be the largest open pit iron mine in the world. …I like my work real well. I get a change tomorrow and hereafter will take samples of the ore and various products of the mill so that they can be assayed. My love to all.

It was at Coleraine that Dunkle read of the Alaska Syndicate’s efforts to reach the Bonanza copper deposit in the Wrangell Mountains. He decided to go there. He made an interim stop at Ely, Nevada, perhaps for convenience or to gain further mining experience. Dunkle’s position at Coleraine had been obtained through J. F. Cole, ex-president of Oliver Iron Co. Cole may have aided Dunkle’s move to Ely since he also controlled Giroux Cons., the owner of the Kimberley copper deposit at Ely.

Dunkle’s first job in Ely was at the McGill smelter. In contrast to a rather lengthy letter to his father (on the backs of six postcards) about the Minnesota iron mine, Earl used far fewer words to his mother in describing his new job location. Three postcards with one line each succinctly cover the trip from mine to smelter:

This is where our ore comes from.

Halfway to the smelter.

And this is where it comes to.

Dunkle also made a contact at Ely that was critical to his later career. He met W. H. Seagrave, the manager of the underground Veteran mine, and rustled the job as assayer.

Although Seagrave was only 10 to 15 years older than Earl, he was an experienced underground mine manager. After gaining some experience in the deep mines of California’s Mother Lode, Seagrave was one of about thirty shaft miners who were hired by John Hays Hammond to oversee the first deep mine in the Witwatersrand gold field in South Africa: the Robinson Deep.

Dunkle’s appointment in a relatively junior position and Seagrave’s experience in senior management suggest the importance of contacts in the worldwide yet small mining fraternity. When Seagrave left Ely for Alaska, Dunkle asked him to look for a mining position that would fit a young engineer. Seagrave remembered the request and sent for Dunkle, who landed in Cordova, Alaska, in early August 1910.

Dunkle, who had grown up in the wooded plateaus of northwestern Pennsylvania, had not appreciated the arid Nevada landscape. He looked forward to Alaska with anticipation. As the steamship made its landfall on Hinchinbrook Island, bound for Cordova, the young miner was awestruck by the mountains that soared upward from the sea. Greenish black spruce forests transitioned upward to green alder thickets, then to emerald green tundra, with a few residual patches of shiny white snow. Dunkle never forgot his first Alaska landfall, the scene later painted for him by Sydney Laurence. Soon after his arrival in Cordova, Earl made a side trip to the end of the CR & NW Railroad track near Child’s Glacier.

It was only weeks after the completion of the Million Dollar Bridge. A few days later, Dunkle made another valuable acquaintance. He met Stephen Birch, the founder of the Kennecott enterprise.

Dunkle’s first Alaskan assignment, the Beatson mine on Latouche Island, was exciting. The unsophisticated twenty-three-year-old with open countenance was enthused about everything, whether it was working on the docks or riding a pitching skiff with boatman Billy Pay to Wallace’s sawmill on the north end of the island. In his job at the Beatson mine, assaying and surveying were not unfamiliar tasks for Dunkle, but the detailed geologic mapping of mines was new. Fortunately Dunkle had a graphic guide, the geologic map of the mine prepared two years earlier by L. A. Levensaler. Levensaler had been one of several young geologists who joined Horace Winchell when he assembled the first staff of mining geologists at Butte, Mont.

Winchell’s small crew devised a system of geologic mine mapping — the Butte System — which is still the basis for underground mine mapping. Dunkle picked up the Butte System from his study of Levensaler’s geologic maps of the Beatsoll mine, a debt that he acknowledged in 1953.

The Beatsoll lacked the glamour of the mines in the Wrangell Mountains. It had, however, an attraction of its own, and it was a mine of special importance to Birch and the Alaska Syndicate, both before and after production began in the Wrangell Mountains. Vessels of Alaska Steamship Company often arrived in Alaska fully laden but lacked freight for the return trip to Seattle. Concentrates from the Beatsoll mine furnished a back haul for “Alaska Steam” as well as feed for the smelting plant at Tacoma, Wash., before the rich Kennecott mines were in production. Beatsoll continued to fill a special role for the next two decades. Kennecott ore was almost too pure to smelt. The pyritic Beatsoll ore was an essential flux for smelting the nearly pure copper in Kennecott ores and concentrates.

When Dunkle arrived at Latouche Island, he found a bustling mining camp with some characters of dubious honesty. One of those characters was promoter Henry Derr Reynolds, whose most spectacular machinations occurred a few years before Dunkle’s arrival. Silver-tongued Reynolds was so persuasive he forever clouded the reputation of Alaska’s Governor John Brady. He had sold Brady on a plan to construct the “Home” railway from Valdez to the copper mines. Reynolds was also the principal of Reynolds-Alaska Development Company. Reynolds-Alaska developed the Horseshoe Bay sulphide deposit two miles south of and on the same mineralized trend as Beatson, but without its rich concentration of copper. The scarcity of copper, however, did not prevent Reynolds from building a small town to develop the mine.

In late 1911 W. H. Seagrave was promoted to general manager of all Kennecott mines in Alaska and moved to Kennicott, leaving Frank Van Campen in operational charge at the Beatson mine. At about the same time, Dunkle was offered a new job as field exploration engineer, or scout, for Alaska Development and Mineral Company of New York, which had an office in Cordova, Alaska. The company, directed by Stephen Birch, was the exploration arm of the Alaska Syndicate. Dunkle was the third man to hold the job, following L. A. Levensaler and J. F. Erdletts. Levensaler, field engineer in 1909 and 1910, quit after the 1910 season, and the job was assigned to Erdletts. Erdletts did not meet Birch’s expectations, and the position was vacant in December 1911. Birch, undoubtedly with Seagrave’s and Frank Van Campen’s approval, filled it with Dunkle, whose apprenticeship was over.