Alaska Miners Association

The Alaska Miners Association is a non-profit company headquartered in Anchorage with Branches located in Anchorage, Kenai, Juneau, Fairbanks, Denali, Ketchikan/Prince of Wales Island, and Nome. The mission of the Alaska Miners Association (AMA) is to advocate for and promote accountable mineral development in the state of Alaska.

The Alaska Miners Association serves as a clearing house for information and a center of expertise for our members and all Alaskans. AMA advocates to the public and policymakers about practices that guarantee the livelihood of Alaska’s mineral industry. Mining is a growing force in Alaska’s economy, creating jobs for thousands of Alaskans and millions of dollars of personal income throughout Alaska. Alaska’s mining industry comprises exploration, mine development, and mineral production. Alaska’s mines produce gold, lead, silver, coal, zinc, as well as construction materials, such as sand, gravel, and rock. Placer gold mining in Alaska started in the 1800s when Russian miners first discovered deposits on the Kenai Peninsula. However, no gold production happened at the time. It wasn’t until 1870, when placer miners in Southeast Alaska, through dogged determination and strong exploration efforts, discovered vast deposits of ore, launching Alaska’s rich mining tradition. While Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome are answerable for most of Alaska’s historical and current gold production gold mining operations are found across much of Alaska.

Placer deposits are concentrations of heavy minerals that form when minerals are wash away, by weather or flooding, downhill into streams. The minerals settle in areas where the river current stalls and can no lengthier contain the minerals. Placer mining is a collection of mining methods that use water to separate valuable ore from the nearby sediment. Placer mining literally began as a flash in the pan, flecks of gold awash in a slurry of sediment, improved by miners using a skilled hand with only a pan the size of a dinner plate and river water. There have been many technical advances in placer mining in Alaska since then. Today miners process much larger quantities of ore-rich material using approaches like dredging and sluicing. Placer mining continues to be a robust and key industry, provides hundreds of jobs, and feeds on-going exploration efforts and population and community growth across the state.