If you are not an Alaskan, this picture will not mean much. So let’s get you educated with Alaska. First, winter in the Alaskan Interior starts when the surface of the rivers freeze from bank to bank. That’s about September 15th in Fairbanks. The rivers will not be ice free until about June 15th. So winter in Fairbanks, where this photograph was taken, is eight months long. Second, it is not unusual for Fairbanks to experience six weeks of 50 below zero temperatures.
What you are seeing here is snapshot of as rough and it can get. Note the structure in the back of the photograph. That’s the mine. The smoke you see coming from that structure indicates the miners are burning coal in the pit to unfreeze the earth so they can free the gold-bearing soil and get it out of the pit. Then the soil is put in the sluice to be washed with water. But at 50 below, water freezes quickly. So the water has to be kept above freezing — note the steam coming from the sluice in the center of the photograph – 24 hours a day.
Unless you are an Alaskan, this photograph looks like a typical winter day in the Lower 48. To an Alaskan it is a snapshot of just how tough it was to make a living as a miner in Fairbanks during the Alaska Gold Rush. Next time you complain how tough it is at your work, think of this picture and be happy you are not slugging it out in 50 below zero weather that will last for eight months.
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