Last updated: June 8, 2020
Audio
Little American Island
Transcript
Welcome to Little American Island, the site where gold was first discovered on the United States side of Rainy Lake and one of 15 visitor destinations in Voyageurs National Park.
In the mid1800s, America found itself in an economic depression. People all over the United States were without work. The civil war had recently ended, creating an influx of people needing jobs. Area iron mines had shut down and thousands of people were unemployed and desperate. People looked for hope in whatever form they could find. So when gold was discovered on Rainy Lake in 1893, a rush to the border began. The prospect of finding gold meant more than just the desire to get rich quick – it was hope for a new life. Did anyone find this new life during the Rainy Lake Gold Rush? We’ll find out as we explore the story of Little American Island.
To understand why gold was found on Rainy Lake, it is helpful to understand the geologic context. In the northwestern region of Voyageurs National Park lies the Rainy Lake Seine River fault zone. Faults are fractures in the earth’s crust where the rocks have been moved in relation to the rocks on the other side of the fracture – often from earthquakes. California’s San Andreas fault is a famous example of a fault. The Rainy Lake Seine River fault zone extends over 130 miles, crossing the border into Canada in a northwest/southeast direction. Located on this fault zone, we find Little American Island.
Little American Island, the fault zone, and Voyageurs National Park are all part of a large geologic region that stretches north to the Arctic Ocean. This region is known as the Canadian Shield. Although the shield is not quite as famous as say, the Grand Canyon, the rocks found here on the surface are older than the rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon! In fact, this region, including Voyageurs National Park, contains some of the oldest rocks on the entire planet, dating back to half of the age of the earth. Think dinosaurs lived a long time ago? Go back in time 65 million years to when the dinosaurs died out… then go back over 40 times further. The age of rocks here are not measured in millions of years, but billions. Most of the rock in Voyageurs – various granites and metamorphic rocks known as gneiss and schist – are about two and a half billion years old. The rocks known as greenstone found in the fault zone – and on Little American Island – are closer to three billion years old.
Now the Voyageurs of back then would be a little different than the Voyageurs of today. A rock structure known as “pillow lava” is found in the greenstone belt, providing a clue to this ancient environment. Where do we find pillow lavas today? Where lava erupts out of the earth’s crust under the surface of the ocean, as we find on the seafloor around the Hawaiian islands. At one time, you would have found active volcanic islands here, surrounded by ocean. Your Voyageurs experience might have been a little different back then!
These pillow lavas and volcanic rock make up much of today’s greenstone belt that Little American Island is a part of. The high pressures and temperatures over the intervening years liquefied minerals such as quartz and deposited them in the greenstone belt. Found alongside the quartz within these quartz veins? Copper…. Nickel… Zinc…Silver…. GOLD.
Of course, none of this would be exposed on the earth’s surface if not for the giant glacial ice sheets of recent history that scoured out the landscape. These glaciers picked up and transported the overlying rock and soil, dropping them off to the south much like a giant conveyor belt. Thus, the greenstone belt lay exposed at the surface, waiting to be explored for possible unfathomable riches.
The hard times of a post-Civil War America created a class of men willing to travel anywhere in the pursuit of a job, money, and a chance at happiness. When the Minnesota state geologist declared in 1866 that the northern Minnesota quartz veins contained “vast deposits” of gold and silver, hordes of men from around the country rushed to the wilderness of northern Minnesota around Lake Vermilion. No gold was found. By the end of the 1860’s, men had given up and returned home or moved on to new adventures.
But still, many were convinced that Minnesota had gold, and persistent prospectors continued exploring over the following decades. Gold was found sporadically around the region. In the summer of 1893, however, a gold prospector, George Davis, camped on Little American Island in Rainy Lake and noticed a quartz vein. Prying loose a quartz sample, Davis crushed the fist-sized stone and found several flakes of gold – about twenty five cents worth. Obtaining more samples, he transported them to Duluth, Minnesota to be assayed, or evaluated. Davis’ quartz samples were assayed at $98/ton. The gold rush was on!
News of the discovery spread like wildfire through the Dakotas, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and people rushed to the area seeking their own fortune. Within sight of Little American Island, the town site of Rainy Lake City was plotted in 1894. Rumors of the vast gold deposits caused the town to spring up almost overnight – the population eventually grew into the hundreds.
Many of these miners were expecting to find “placer gold”, in which small flakes and pieces of gold are found resting loose sediment in stream beds and gravel deposits. This isn’t what miners found on Rainy Lake. All of the gold here was interlaced throughout veins of quartz. To extract gold from these quartz veins, the miners had to engage in a process called hard-rock mining.
To reach quartz veins and pockets of gold, miners used dynamite to sink shafts. If testing proved that the gold was valuable, mining began. On Rainy Lake, miners fired the first blast in the fall of 1893. Investors formed the Bevier Mining and Milling Co. and began heavily mining Little American Island in 1894.
Hard-rock mining was dangerous, with the ever-present threat of cave-ins, explosions, toxic fumes, and flooding. It was also difficult and time consuming. Often there would be two men working at a bottom of a vertical shaft. They would load rock into a barrel that was then pulled out of the mine shaft using a large pulley mounted on a head frame. The first shaft sunk on Little American Island reached a depth of 100 feet – they had to pull that barrel a long way!
Once the rock was hauled out of the mine, it was then loaded onto rail cars and brought to a loading dock near the shore. Miners would transport a boat full of ore one mile to the loading dock at Rainy Lake City to be crushed at a 5 stamp mill - a set of five crushers (or stamps) that pounded the ore to a powder. The gold was then separated from the powder through the use of mercury in a process called amalgamation.
The stamp mill at Rainy Lake City operated between 1894-1897, continually pounding ore brought from Little American Island. Often there would be 15-20 men on Little American Island at a time – both miners underground and laborers on the surface. This proved to be an expensive operation - miners were paid $2/day while laborers earned $1.50/day. In addition to paying wages, mine owners had the high cost of transporting the raw ore one mile from Little American Island to the stamp mill. It also needed to run the mill. By the time 1897 rolled around, ownership of the Little American Island mining operation passed through the hands of three different companies, each having high hopes for recovering enough gold to make a profit. One company moved a 10 stamp mill to the island to make the process of crushing rock more efficient. An additional mine shaft was excavated to reach deeper into the quartz, hoping to recover quartz with a higher percentage of gold. By the end of 1897, the new shaft had reached over 200 feet. Finally, the rich quartz was finally within reach!
But it was too late. In 1898, mining on Little American Island was halted. A total of $4,500 worth of gold had been recovered - $213,000 in today’s money. This was not enough to maintain the expensive mining operation. Out of money, the Lyle Mining Company quietly shut down. Gold seekers headed northwest to the gold fields of the Klondike, where placer gold had been discovered. Rainy Lake City – the town that sprung up overnight – became a ghost town just as quickly. By 1901, even the post office finally shuttered its doors.
Is there gold on Little American Island today? Yes. There is gold distributed in quartz veins throughout this fault line. Despite the presence of gold, it could not be mined from the ground at a profit. The lack of sufficient financial backing…the discovery of less gold than anticipated…the difficulties in reaching the gold…the lure of greater riches in the Klondike…. This all led to the demise of the mining on Rainy Lake. There were periodic attempts to mine for gold on Little American Island over the next 30 years, but without luck. Other islands throughout Voyageurs – Dryweed Island, Bushyhead Island, Big American Island – all had mines that met similar fates. Only across the border in Canada did any mines make anyone rich.
However, to call the entire endeavor a failure would be false. Many people who left Rainy Lake City settled in the region rather than heading to the Klondike. These settlers realized this area containing today’s Voyageurs National Park had a lot of offer. The travel routes that had been developed to reach the gold mines allowed easier mobility, meaning a living could be made from the fish and timber. They spread the word of the area’s beauty and guided tourists who came to see it for themselves. They used tailings from the stamp mill and mine to build the streets of a town called Koochiching. Today this town is known as International Falls. They came here with hope – hope to find gold to allow them to have a better life of stability and prosperity. They found their gold all right, just not in the form they were looking for.
Description
Little American Island is located on Rainy Lake in Voyageurs National Park. Learn about the history of gold mining on Rainy Lake - did anyone strike it rich on Little American Island? Listen to find out!
Duration
11 minutes, 59 seconds
Credit
NPS
Date Created
04/16/2010
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