Alaska Highlights
A tour for visitors to Alaska, the 49th state.
Gold Mining 
Why visit Alaska?
GOLD FEVER
A trip to Alaska wouldn't be complete without prospecting for gold. The tourist experience is for education and entertainment. Panning for gold is fun and productive, because tourists will find enough gold flecks to make a souvenir like a key chain or a necklace. It's like a visit to Las Vegas--go for the show, but don't expect to strike it rich.
The gold industry in Alaska today is a large commercial enterprise run by well-funded mining corporations that produce gold as well as other minerals. Gold mining is still a profitable industry considering the current value of gold. Consult The Resource Development Council for Alaska for reports of numerous gold mines and their staggering annual gold production amounts.
Gone are the days of slogging up a mountain hoping just to survive the trip to the gold fields to strike it rich. For today's tourist, it's more fun to take the guided tours of some historic gold mines, to touch the gold straight from the ground, knowing you can return to a hotel restaurant and a warm, soft bed. Would you really want to cook over a campfire and shiver all night in a bedroll?
EL DORADO GOLD MINE
A tour of this operation is well worth an afternoon. It is fun and everyone finds a little gold which makes it easy to see how people catch gold fever. Don't quit your day job, the amount of gold an average person finds wouldn't justify trying to make panning for gold more than a hobby. Finding a big gold nugget is probably as likely as winning the lottery.
Take an armchair tour of the El Dorado Gold Mine, located about 10 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska.
This is a photoshow of the El Dorado Gold Mine Tour. Click arrow to activate. This show has been tested on Windows Internet Explorer 7 browser, ALASKA GASTINEAU MILL AND GOLD MINE TOUR
This is another gold mine tour available further south in the state. Alaska has sites focused on gold available to visit state-wide. Gold prospecting played a very large role in the development of the state.
For those who would also like to see a very realistic, historical, technical view of how the early gold mines operated, this tour gets into very nitty-gritty details deep inside the tunnels. Located five miles south of Juneau, this mine was a major producer of gold before World War I.
It is a very informative tour with the opportunity to see the veins of gold in the rocks and observe the very noisy demonstration of equipment in operation to dislodge the valuable metal. There is also an opportunity to pan for gold and sell or keep your flecks or nuggets of gold. It gives the modern visitor a glimpse of the hard work and difficult conditions miners endured in the quest for riches when technology didn't exist to make it easier.
With other gold mines available for tours around the state, El Dorado and Gastineau are two that will give the tourist with limited time, a good look at the history and the process of prospecting for gold.
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