The proposed British Columbia-Yukon-Alaska highway should be built at once along a route to connect Telegraph Creek, the Taku district, and Atlin; the Americans are waiting to build lateral roads to it and a great development in mining production will follow its completion, a group of Vancouver mining and engineering men were told Tuesday by Mr. H. McN. Fraser, civil engineer of many years experience in Northern British Columbia.
While telling about the mineral prospects of the Taku region to a joint
luncheon at Hotel Vancouver of the mining bureau of the Board of Trade, the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and the executive of the British Columbia Chamber of Mines, Mr. Fraser strongly urged Vancouver men to support the project for the new highway.
BENEFIT TO VANCOUVER.
"Vancouver especially will benefit by the construction of that highway,"
Mr. Fraser said. "Already this year $70,000 has been spent in this city for supplies for the miners of the Taku region, and that sum will be increased in proportion with the tremendous development which would accompany the building of the highway."
The highway route which Mr. Fraser proposed would, he said, serve both economic and scenic purposes; it would be beautiful for motorists and it would open a mining district, vast in possibilities and hitherto inaccessible.
It would run north from Telegraph Creek along the Tuya River, reach a high point of 2800 feet at the Nahlin River, proceed along the Inklin River, reach another high point of 4800 feet at the Nakina River, and then go east by north to Atlin. It would enter the Taku district and connect it with both Atlin to the north, and Telegraph Creek to the south.
RICH MINERAL REGION.
Skirting the Alaska-British Columbia boundary near the Taku River, the
highway would also provide the Americans with an opportunity to build lateral roads to join it.
Part of the Taku region could be opened up now, Mr. Fraser said, if the
Canadians would co-operate with the Americans in building a road eastward along the Taku to the junction of the Tulsequah River, which could eventually be used as a lateral to the big highway. A section of this lateral, the most expensive to construct, leading from Juneau to the boundary, would be within American territory; the rest would be Canadian.
The mining properties near the junction of the Taku and Tulsequah already show so much promise of wealth that such a road leading from them to Juneau has become almost a necessity, Mr. Fraser declared.
DISTRICT ADVANCING.
The Taku district, as a place for large scale mine operations, is virtually a new discovery, having recently been examined for that purpose. The two firms interested in the development, the United Eastern Mining Co. and the Alaska Juneau Mining Co., are so confident of results that two concentrators will shortly be built there, and a railroad is already completed between the mines and Juneau.
At present, he said, the companies are using the Taku itself as a means of transport for their ore, but as it is closed to navigation for five months of the twelve, and the mines can be operated for the full year, another connection must be sought.
Mr. Fraser said that 1000 persons are expected in the district in 1930, and enterprising men of Juneau are purchasing two score motor boats with which to transport supplies from Juneau up the Taku River to the mine sites. The Dominion Government is also expected to establish a customs inspection point on the boundary above
Juneau on the Taku.
NEED OF ROAD.
Describing the mining potentialities of the Taku district, Mr. Fraser declared that he knew of two good prospective mines which need only a road to be practicably workable; now they are inaccessible. He said he also has knowledge of two others which would bear investigation.
As an added inducement for operation, he said, the district affords plenty of lumber and water power for mine development.
Much of the travelling in the region is now done, Mr. Fraser said, by airplane, since it is often possible to go in an hour a distance which would occupy four days by pack horse. He remarked that the present maps of the district show few of the lakes really there, lakes which become useful for landings when riding by plane.
