Last Chance Mining Museum. The city of Juneau began as a mining town when Richard Harris and Joe Juneau discovered gold in 1880 on a creek near by, that they named Gold Creek. Within a year there was a trading post, saloons and missionaries and the camp became a town. There are two kinds if mining, Placer mining which is digging out dirt/rocks from a river bank and panning for small nuggets or flakes of gold washed down the river, and Hard-Rock mining which is digging tunnels into the mountain, bringing our the rock, crushing it and processing the crushed rock for gold.
It takes 20 tones of rock to get an once of gold. From 1882 to 1917 The Tredwell mines operated in the area and produced $66 million in gold in its 35 years. In 1916 the Alaska-Juneau gold mine was built and became the largest gold mine of its kind in the world. At its peak it employed over 1000 men, an ran 24 hours 363 days a year until 1944. It produced more than $80 million in gold. We toured the only remaining building that features original tools, the large compressor that ran lights, the rail cars into the mines and the drills, and lots of old photos and information. It was very interesting. There are still small mines in the area and we saw people panning for gold along the river edge.