Article August 7, 1902 Issue

The Value of Alaska

Boston Transcript

A million dollars a month is the estimate made by the Bureau of Statistics of the present value of the market which "frozen Alaska" offers the producers and manufacturers of the United States.

"Commercial Alaska in 1901" is the title of a monograph just issued by the Treasury Bureau of Statistics. In it are presented some striking figures about this (until recently) little explored and little understood territory of the United States. By reason of the application of modern systems of travel and transportation, Alaska is now as accessible as Arizona. Three days of travel by modern ocean steamers from Seattle, among the island and along the coast which forms the south-eastern extension of Alaska, lands the traveler at Skagway; twelve hours by rail over the mountains carries him to the head waters of the Yukon, where comfortable and well-equipped river steamers carry him to the gold field of central Alaska or down the Yukon River, which is navigable for more than two thousand miles at this season of the year. From the month of the Yukon another comparatively short trip, by steamer, carries him to Cape Nome—the latest and greatest of the gold fields of Alaska.

Gold, fish, and furs are, according to this monograph, the principal industries of Alaska at the present time, and they send to the United States $15,000,000 worth of their products, $8,000,000 of gold, $6,000,000 of fish, chiefly salmon, and the remainder furs.

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