Origins of the Gallop Gold: A History Lesson

Louise Gallop personally mined her gold claim staked along Friday Creek. She spent many months at her cabin nestled in the heart of Denali National Park & Preserve within the famed Kantishna Mining District. A number of the larger gold nuggets are intertwined with quartz, and other pieces are imprinted with the patterns of quartz crystals that shaped the gold as the nugget formed. The presence of quartz is an indication that the gold was discovered close to the source of formation (as opposed to flakes and pieces found miles downstream in a creek or river, which become rounded and smooth from their travels down stream). 

According to a 2004 U.S.  Geological Survey (USGS) Data File for the Mount McKinley Quadrangle (see Data File document), Friday Creek is located at Latitude 63.5431, Longitude 150.9665. The waterway is a relatively short (2 miles), and steep (declining 400 feet per mile) creek that rises against the west flank of Wickersham Dome and flows westerly into Moose Creek.

• USGS Resource Data - Mount McKinley Quadrangle - Friday Creek (excerpt) - geologic and mineral resource description of the Friday Creek mining claim area. 

The fascinating story of the Kantishna gold rush is told within a document entitled Kantishna Gold!. The following section summarizes key information pertaining to Friday Creek and surrounding areas.

• Kantishna Gold! - an intriguing summary of the short-lived gold rush of 1905, events leading up to it, key characters and the subsequent riches mined by a hardy few.  

Gold was likely first discovered along Friday Creek in 1905, in conjunction with major discoveries the same year in the Kantishna District, the site of an intense, but brief stampede beginning July 1905. The seeds of the stampede were planted in 1903.  In spring of 1903, Alaska District Court Judge James Wickersham and a handful of fellow Fairbanksans embarked on an expedition to climb Mt. McKinley (now known as Denali).  Along the way, the climbing party took time to search for gold in the northern part of the Kantishna Hills, where they staked a series of 10 placer mining claims. In fall 1903, a story published in the Nome Nugget newspaper told of course placer gold panned from streams just north of Mount McKinley.  The news attracted a number of prospectors, but remote and rugged terrain deterred many others.

By 1904, the hardiest of prospectors were exploring the Kantishna area, and more claims were staked. Among those staking claims were veteran Kantishna miner Joseph Dalton and partner Simon Stiles who made their way to Friday Creek and Eureka Creek, which proved to be some of the richest parts of the Kantishna gold fields. The men staked claims on both creeks by July 1904. Meanwhile prospector Joseph Quigley and partner Jack Horn also moved into the area, and discovered bedrock rich in gold deposits. 

Quigley, Horn, Dalton and Stiles are credited with sparking the 1905 stampede to plunder Kantishna's potential. Despite the challenges in finding supplies and basic necessities in the remote and unforgiving region, the number of recorded gold discoveries jumped from  100 in 1904 to over 1,000 in 1905. At the height of the stampede, more than 2,000 miners, storekeepers, speculators and hangers-on had arrived in the district. Yet, with a growing number of prospectors disappointed by the false promise of easy pickings, the stamped quickly dwindled, and by January and February 1906, local newspapers reported widespread abandonment of Kantishna boomtowns. 

By late 1906, only a handful of miners were left, most of them were the same pioneers who discovered Kantishna gold. Dalton and Stiles continued to work their Eureka and Friday Creek claims. Quigley led a search for the original source of Kantishna gold deep in the surrounding hills and he discovered not only gold, but also commercially viable deposits of silver, lead, zinc and copper. 

Though the area did not attract subsequent stampedes, the land sustained a small cadre of Kantishna residents for decades to come.  They led subsistence lifestyles while working shallow river placers and excavating tunnels to support hard-rock mining efforts. Joseph Quigley and his wife Fannie are the most well known of the Kantishna pioneers. Fannie had arrived in Kantishna in 1906 to establish a roadhouse, and she soon partnered with Joe Quigley to stake additional placer claims. They managed a grubstake, shared a home and established multiple mines over the years.  The couple finally married in 1918, and moved to a new home on the side of Quigley Ridge above Friday Creek. Today, the Quigley's Friday Creek homestead is hidden by a stand of alder, but traces of the cabin foundation and garden terraces remain.  It is in this Friday Creek area, where Louise Gallop purchased her claim. 

An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 ounces of gold have been produced from Friday Creek since 1905, with the most productive years in 1982-1983, when more than 4,000 ounces were recovered. Louise Gallop's claim was part of this recovery, as she arranged to have her stake professionally mined during these two years. The area is no longer commercially mined, except for recreational panning by tourists and  park guests.