A Houston, B.C. mining duo says their patented equipment has shown strong results in recovering gold from historic mine tailings in Juneau, Alaska.
Stan and Chris Spletzer are now completing construction of a custom-built dredge barge in their hometown after they were invited in 2016 by lease holders to bring their gold recovery system to Juneau鈥檚 Thane Road area, where tailings from the Alaska-Juneau (AJ) Mine remain, Stan Spletzer said in a letter to Houston Today.
Using fresh water flowing from the mountain, they processed five-gallon pails of material collected when the tide was out.
鈥淚t was a pleasant surprise to realize that our equipment was showing pure lines of gold with every bucket dumped into our system,鈥� Spletzer said in the letter.
The AJ Mine opened in 1917 and closed in 1944 due to rising labour costs, falling gold prices, and wartime priorities, Spletzer explained in the letter. At its peak in the 1930s, it employed about 1,000 workers and produced 90 million tons of gold-bearing ore.
Tailings from the AJ Mine and the nearby Treadwell Mine were used to fill tidal flats and expand Juneau鈥檚 shoreline, with about one-third of the modern city built on the material.
In 2011, a Geological 43-101 report on five large privately owned claims along Thane Road and into Gastineau Channel described the site as a potential opportunity, Spletzer said. Over the years, some people were permitted to work the area with small floating sluices for limited hours each day.
Spletzer said that after processing the material, the pair wrote a detailed report showing gold values higher than the 2011 study suggested. Howard Lockwood, a lifelong Juneau resident who invited the brothers and died in 2023 at age 97, later wrote to Spletzer that, having used many forms of gravitational equipment since 1963, he had 鈥渘ot ever seen any equipment that could produce gold to the capacity鈥� of theirs, Spletzer said.
The findings led the Spletzers to design and build their own dredge barge, differing from typical dredging machines that require scuba divers to operate large suction hoses. Their 20-by-40-foot vessel uses twin 42-inch jigs feeding into their patented system, which they say is less affected by wave and tidal movement than sluice systems.
The barge, now nearly complete, was built in Houston, where the Spletzers also operate a fabricating shop.
