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Newcomers get to test mining and logging skills alongside old-timers at Juneau Gold Rush Days
- Mark Sabbatini
- 10 hours ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 7 minutes ago
Two-day event that continues through Sunday with competitions and other activities has grown into one of community’s largest gatherings over 34 years
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Christian Brown, 17, is a newcomer to Juneau Gold Rush Days, but quickly showed he has the natural skills of the miners and loggers who inspired one of Juneau’s largest annual events.
"I’ve split wood for my family and I’ve done it for pay for a while," he said on Saturday after winning the teen spike driving competition, which involves using the back of an axe to drive spikes into a wood beam.
The same competition was a challenge for Arramina Whitmore, 15, whose family has generations of mining experience and involvement with organizing Gold Rush Days since its debut in 1990. She did better during the subsequent teen hand mucking competition that involves shoveling broken rock into a mining cart as quickly as possible.
"This is a once-a-year kind of thing," said Whitmore, a dock representative for a flightseeing company who estimated at least 10 family members were at the event at Savikko Park on Saturday.
The two-day event that continues Sunday, in addition to mining and logging contests, features live music, vendor and information booths, tours of nearby historic mine relics, and kids' activities such as gold panning and a chance to operate a mini excavator.
Among those taking a five-minute turn at the helm of the mini excavator were Gregory Brown and his son, Sage, 5, trying to lift tires surrounding the machine and place them around traffic cones topped with tennis balls. They were partially successful.
"Now that he's old enough he really wanted to do it," Gregory Brown said afterward. The controls, he said, are "like a Nintendo — you’ve got to just play it a while."
Rebecca Longshore, Sage Brown’s mother, said the family has been coming to Gold Rush Days regularly during the past several years, largely for the children’s activities. Neither parent has worked as a logger or miner, but Gregory Brown said he had a cousin who used to work at the Kensington Mine north of Juneau.
Gold Rush Days celebrates the area’s long mining and logging history, and during its peak years has attracted more than 10,000 people, according to organizers. This is the event’s 34th year, since there was a two-year disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event has grown over the decades with a wider range of activities as well as people, said Cindy Hudson, who first attended about 30 years ago. Many of the additions are activities beyond the competitions, such as the excavator and a wide variety of booths inside and outside a large vendor tent.
"They’ve had to get out of the tent they have so many vendors," she said. Food and drinks are the primary offerings, with Hudson noting there seems to be fewer craft vendors and more people involved with political efforts than past years.
While Saturday’s events focused on mining, Sunday’s competitions shift to logging. An awards ceremony is scheduled at the end of the competitions and activities are scheduled to continue until 6 p.m.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
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