From the “Official diary of the Sweet-Wilson expedition into the frozen tundra of the far north, 1946,” located in the Alaska Historical Collection.
A few miles down the road cameras again began clicking with three gold prospectors as their subjects. These gentlemen were employed by the Yukon Gold Corporation to test sidecreeks of the Delta River in order to determine whether or not the area would be worth large-scale operations. The Yukon company expects to put in a big dragline here but will have spent $3000-4000 conducting tests such as this before any amount of gold is taken out.
The gentleman wearing long boots is Lloyd Wokasch, 37, of Helena, Mont., who commented that after all this posing he probably could get a job in Hollywood as a stand-in for Gene Autry’s horse. Lloyd formerly worked for the Caird Engineering Works in Helena, and came to Alaska last May, with his brother, Leonard, by driving up the Alcan with a truckload of mining machinery intended for the Yukon company’s Delta River project. The two had done a little mining in Montana and had always wanted to see Alaska, so they took a testing job for the summer.
Leonard, 27, still wearing his OD pants, spent four years with the 43rd Division, as a private, and fought his way from New Guinea to Tokyo. He plans to return to Montana next fall but may come back in 1947 to do some prospecting on his own. “There are thousands of acres the old-timers never touched,” he says. “They couldn’t have found all the gold in Alaska. Now we’ve got roads so we can drive farther into the bush, taking more equipment and staying in longer. Besides, at least we know now a lot of places where not to look.” Len says it costs $3-4000 to outfit and prospect for one summer in Alaska, and even if you hit some colors you’ll probably have to come back again & again to show enough to attract the interest of a mining company. The profit, of course, comes not from what you pan but from the sale or lease of land in which you can prove there is paying gold.
(Pages 107-108).
Download a copy of these pages: The official diary of the Sweet-Wilson Expedition