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John Miscovich

John Miscovich

John Miscovich

John Miscovich

John Miscovich

On Christmas Day 1908, nearly a hundred years ago, gold was first discovered three miles from Flat at Discovery Claim on Otter Creek. The strike started off the two-years-in-the-making Flat/Iditarod gold rush, the third largest in Alaska.

“Before the help of hydraulicing and heavy equipment, my father, Pete Miscovich,” John Miscovich recently remembered by satellite phone from Flat, “began his mining career here in Flat/Iditarod.”

Twenty-three years earlier, Peter (originally Pero) Miscovich was born in 1885 in Imotica, 27 miles north of Dubrovnik, Croatia, along the Dalmatian Coast. “It was a land of beauty, rocks and poverty,” Miscovich remembered. As word of the Alaska gold rush spread, many jumped ship for North America.

In 1903 at 18, Pete arrived at Ellis Island. In spring 1910 while working at a coal mine in Washington state, when he heard about the Iditarod stampede, he got his paycheck and booked steerage as far as St Michael’s on the Yukon River. The rest of the way up the Yukon, Innoko and Iditarod Rivers, he worked for passage.

“When my father arrived,” John pointed out, “the good paystreaks on Otter and Flat Creeks were already taken by the big operators with dredges: Guggenheim, Riley and John Beaton. My father watched for abandoned claims, and in 1912, he caught three-fourths of the Hensley mining placer claim, 15 acres. With his brother, Andrew, and John Popovich, my father began a small underground drift mining operation.

“Throughout the winter, steam generated in the boiler house was shot through three-quarter-inch pipe into an underground 8-by-8-foot trench shaft to thaw the paydirt and then pullied, bucket by bucket, into a ‘winter dump.’ In spring, the ‘dump’ was sluiced.”

In 1912, Pete sent for Stana Bagoy, the sister of Croatian prospector, John Bagoy, to join them in Flat. By Christmas, Pete and Stana were married. In 1914, Stana gave birth to George, the first of her seven children. Soon Eva arrived; “I was born,” John said, “right here, in 1918 at Discovery Claim.”

“My parents,” he pointed out, “had two major disappointments. Gold went down to $20 an ounce, and my father had to shut down his operation.”

Nearby Guggenheim employed 400 laborers at $6 a day; word was the company might have to shut down the dredge. A Guggenheim representative offered Pete a lease of all Guggenheim’s holdings on Flat Creek with 10 percent royalty of gross. A deal was signed. Pete hurried to raise the money for a hydraulic plant as well as get access to the Fox Gulch water ditch.

“He figured,” John explained, “that if he could lift the gold-bearing gravel up to a 15-foot box, he’d have adequate slope to sluice. By 1920, my father was doing open pit placer mining.”

In 1921 Guggenheim shut down its large dredge, laid off its workers, also putting all the woodcutters and teamsters out of work. A sale for the dredge and all the Guggenheim’s holdings on Flat Creek was negotiated with Dave E. Browne for $10,000, which included no settlement to Pete and Stana. Pete moved his family to Flat, where they opened a public steam bathhouse, surviving on that income.

In 1923, Pete moved his hydraulic plant and a blacksmith shop on frozen Flat Creek 4 miles with horses and dog team back to his original claim to begin — not underground as before — but an open pit mining operation.

Despite more obstacles, by the fall of 1924 Pete Miscovich had mined $8,000 worth of gold, just before a creditor was about to shut down the claim.

“That fall,” John grinned wryly, “Alastair McBain and Corey Ford of Saturday Evening Post magazine, surprised to find a large family living among the tailing piles, did an article on us.

Additionally, Pete picked up a lot more claims, giving him a key position on Otter Creek near Discovery. Locals whispered to Stana that the land was worthless, dredged-out.

Pete smiled as he studied the new heavy equipment, bulldozer, tractor, draglines and backhoes. His father reasoned that early miners hadn’t dug down to the bedrock, where the coarse gold was located.

“My father didn’t drink and gamble like the others, but rather, he burned his gas lamp until late, reading magazines and journals, writing letters inquiring about new equipment.”

By 1934, Pete had the down-payment for the Caterpillar diesel 50 tractor with an Isaacson Bulldozer, the first in Alaska. During the season of 1935, the bulldozer increased Pete’s production from $8,000 a season to $60,000 while gold jumped to $35 an ounce.

“Moreover in 1936,” John said, “my father got his dream: a 65-ton, one-and-a-half-yard P & H backhoe, the first in the northwest states and in Alaska!”

To harness the power of Otter Creek, Pete began studying water turbines and Pelton wheels during the late 1930s. By end of 1938, Pete’s system was supplying all the electrical power for the Miscovich camp and shop.

Efficiency improved 20 percent; the family’s gold production increased into the thousands of ounces per season. “The years from 1936-World War II,” John remembered, “were the glory years for the Miscovich family. By 1940, my father and we four sons had formed Pete Miscovich and Sons,” branching out to other claims in the area.

Pete kept operating through World War II, using his water turbine, until his death in 1950. He was gone along with the mining companies who had produced the 2 million ounces of gold from the Flat/Iditarod area.

In 2002 Pete Miscovich was inducted into the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame. Chuck Hawley eulogized, “Despite language barriers and isolation, Miscovich built a placer mining dynasty known for its technological innovation and organizational excellence.”

On July 4, 90-year-old John Miscovich and his wife, Mary, celebrated 100 years since John Beaton and Frank Dikeman first struck gold. The Miscovichs welcomed friends to the longest family-owned, gold mining operation in Alaska, where Pete Miscovich first arrived from Croatia to the Flat/Iditarod Goldrush.