We left Auke Lake in Juneau at 5:30 am as it was overcast. Decided it would be a good time to go to Mendenhall Glacier. 
and we were right as no one was there. It's a littl emore impressive when you don't have everybody ifghting to take a picture. After walking around for thirty minutes we drove to Douglas Island and down to to Sandy Beach. This is a nice little community park that has picnic area, baseball field playground and also the trail to the abandoned Treadmill Mine. 
We spent about two hours on the trail in the forest beside the beach. The sand on this beach is the result of the mining operation.The brochure Dale picked up yesterday at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum had a self-guided tour that was very helpful in identifying the ruins. In this overgrown forest there used to be four mines, 5 mills and a whole community set up for the miners and their families. Gold was discovered here in 1881. A man by the name of John Tredwell bought the claim for $400. It would later yeld nearly $70 million in gold over a 40 year period. Not only were there ruins of the mining operation, but the superintendent's mansion; bunkhouses for the single men; the Treadwell Club for the families containing a library, Turkish bath, auditorium and bowling alley; a natatorium housing a gymnasium and swimming pool; and a store carrying the largest inventory of food and clothes in Alaska at the the time, were among the ruins. Not all of this is visible but the tour map show the locations of where these building used tpo be.
Gold was extracted from crushed ore by pounding metal stamps which made quite a racket 363 days a year. Workers were paid about $100 for 8 hours a day, seven days a week and only two holidays off a year. Pollution from the mining process killed off all the trees near the mine. All of the trees standing in this forest are less than a hundred years old. In 1917 a spectacular mining accident took place resulting in the flooding and cave-in of three of the four mines. Questionable mining practices and an extremely high tide were to blame, but surprisingly only one miner was missing and it was believed that he skipped town. The remaining mine was shut down in 1922. While we were ther we found many artifacts from that time period. It was low tide and we saw many broken pieces of chipped China that was scattered on the beach. We also found a fork that was being oxidized and turning green. The picture here show the water pump that still stands in the middle of the bay. You can also see the pillars in the picture which was for the warf that was for loading the gold. In searching for information on the Treadmill Mine, I crossed paths with Mark Howells who is the grandson of one of the miners who worked in the Treadwill Mines for a period of time between the years 1910-17. He has an interesting story to explain how he went about finding out that his great-grandfather had worked in Treadwill.
We took the bridge back over to Juneau and took showers at the local pool near the High School. Then we took a trail above Cope Park, one of Juneau's city parks as this went back thru foressted area near a creek . It looked like mainly locals used this area and there wer very few cars here but many people had walked to the park. We came back to the car and found picnic tables in the park where we decided to set up the camp stove for lunch. After eating we woudl go back towards town and explore the Alaska State Museum. The lady at the desk gave us a city map of Juneau. A good map of this town is hard to come by. Then we did some more shopping downtown. The sun finally came out late in the afternoon. We ate pizza again at Pizzaria Roma's where we ate last night. Then we drove down to Thane. A lot more people were out looking at the salmon in the river tonight.
A few people were down below fishing as well. We drove back to the ferry terminal at 10:30 pm and found a place to pull over for the night.