join us monday for a special labor day edition of "book tv" on c-span 2. with ag 8:30 eastern book festival from washington, dc. than 5:00 p.m., a profile on all points books. at 6:30 p.m. eastern, a discussion with the librarian of congress, and archivist of the united states on collections in the digital age. at 8:30 p.m. eastern, in-depth fiction edition with jacqueline woodson. watch on "book tv." this summer c-span with the help of cable partner gci spent time in alaska, exploring the state's people and natural beauty. up next, a conversation with stan jones, former investigative reporter with the anchorage news

on the exxon oil spill. mr. jones: i woke up in my home, eagle river which is a suburb, and it was all over the news. before i got to work i knew all about it. my first reaction was dis-believe, how could this happen? the second reaction was just shock at the enormity of it. they spilled i think 11 million gallons of oil and covered like 11,000 square miles of ocean before it was done. the scale was inconceivable. until it happened. >> where were you working and what was your job then? mr. jones: i worked for the anchorage daily news and i was a reporter primarily doing investigative work but also covering business, so i had covered oil even before the spill. >> can you tell us what the history of the oil industry was in alaska, how large was it during that time?

mr. jones: the modern oil industry that we know today got started in alaska in 1967 when there was a huge crude oil strike. the pipeline began operating in 1973, and that's when the tanker traffic in prince william sound happened. about 15 years past before the spill. the oil industry in alaska from the date oil was discovered had an enormous mind share in the state. it was instantly recognized as the biggest source of government funding. for long time it was the only source that matter. the oil industry produced money so fast in the state coffers that one of the jokes was even the alaska legislature could not waste it all. some of it was accumulated in what we call the permanent fund. some of it was spent on state services. so the oil industry besides generating all this money, they

took an acute interest in politics because they are always interested in politics and taxes and in regulation. over time, their influence over the legislature became enormous. and it was almost mandatory to be oil friendly to get elected to the legislature in this state. >> who were some of the big companies that were operating out of here? mr. jones: the big three were nr, bp, exxon mobil and conoco phillips. over time, the names have changed as companies merged and absorbed each other. so early in the day what is now , conoco was really arco. but the big big players have not three change. the big two are bp and exxon. >> you mentioned their influence over the legislature. what did that mean for regulations regarding oil in the state? mr. jones: back then it was always an enormous battle to get

any new regulation in place. the trend really ran in the opposite direction. regulations tended to get looser, not tighter. then there was a factor of what happened in the oil spill. most regulation having to do with the operation of that tanker, the exxon valdez, were federal in origin and focus. the regulations having to do with cleanup, on the other hand, were fundamentally at the state level. that was part of the problem. regulations were a big part of the problem in the spill. the federal operation was too loose, and that is why the tanker hit by a reef. the cleanup readiness were to o loose, and that's why the company that runs the system and the tanker terminal were just unprepared for a cleanup. first three days or so, there was essentially no

cleanup effort. it was ideal cleanup weather. for prince william sound, they had three days of good weather after the spill. we had this glossy lake of oil spreading out from that tanker and essentially nothing happening to clean it up. >> to explain for the people watching how does the oil , process work? where was the oil pulled from and why was it on a tanker, and where was it going? mr. jones: sure. the oil is produced on alaska's north slope which is up in the arctic, really a harsh environment, tundra frost, permafrost country. so it is hard to operate and you have to be careful not to disrupt things. there is a population of caribou and polar bears up there that have to be protected. oil industry has actually done a pretty good job on that part of it.

the northlope, on slope the two best fields are park and kudo bay. there huge. and on the north slope it is put into a pipeline that runs 800 miles south across the middle of alaska to the port of valdez on prince william sound. and there it is loaded onto oil tankers and shipped to markets on the u.s. west coast. i think the exxon valdez was heading for long beach. it was carrying about 53 million barrels of oil, so it lost about 20% of its cargo. and the rest is history sadly. >> can we actually talk about what happened on that day? mr. jones: sure. the tanker left valdez before midnight and sailed out of veld as and through prince william sound.

12:04 in march, which was good friday, it hit the reef which was a well marked navigational hazard in prince william sound. what had happened before, earlier in the day there had been reports of icebergs in the tanker lanes, so the captain requested permission to deviate from the tanker lanes to avoid these icebergs in case they were still there. so it is a fairly tricky to knew her, but nothing unusual, it happens all the time. the failure was to return to the tanker lanes at the proper point, and instead the ship sailed into this reef. there were some conditions on the ship that contributed to the accident. the master was a guy named joe hazelwood. it was always a question as to whether he was drinking and if he was drinking was it a factor. that was never established clearly, and i kind of doubt it myself.

what he did was to put the third mate in charge of the bridge and go below to do paperwork. the tanker crews, and this is identified as one of the factors in the accident, the size had been reduced over the years. there was a constant battle with fatigue and overwork and stress for these crews, and that was identified as a contributing factor. at any rate, third mate was in charge of the bridge. as a technical matter, he was not qualified to do what he was doing. and he should not have been, but again it comes back to the workload and the skinniness of the crew on these tankers. this was all addressed after the spill. we have not had another one. perhaps they were. >> how much oil was this tanker carrying and how much spilled out? mr. jones: it had 53 million gallons on board.

and they usually measure tanker cargoes in barrels, so that was one and a quarter million barrels. in the spill it lost about 11 million gallons, which i think was around 250,000 barrels. now the question of how much it lost has been controversial so the number i just gave you is really kind of the generally accepted figure. the reason it is hard to figure out how much oil it lost is that as the oil went out water came , in. it was hard to get an exact measurement of how much it lost. >> this happened in prince william sound. where is that located, and if people have visited their prior to the oil spill, what would they have found there? mr. jones: prince william sound is located on the gulf of alaska. it is located a couple hundred miles south of anchorage, is probably more or less in the middle of the state.

so it is this beautiful expanse of enclosed waters with islands and peninsulas and coastlines and a rich population of sea birds and fish and sea otters and so on. , anyone who has ever been to prince william sound has been stunned by the natural beauty. and relatively untouched by man. you don't see much development at all. villages.le fishing maybe you would see a few fishing boats on the water, maybe some cargo vessels coming in with containers to the container port in valdez. but very little touch from the hand of man. so then you have this tanker that spilled the oil and fouled everything in sight. and it was, it was just a shock to the conscious and to the consciousness. how could this happen? oil spillspens when into a large body of water like that, what does it do to it and

how fast does it travel, do we know? mr. jones: the oil in and of itself doesn't travel very fast. it floats on the top and is carried by currents. it does not tend to disperse rapidly into the water if the water is calm, but it can get turned up by the waves and mixes into the water. so when that happens, it is a threat to fish and plankton and so on in the water. when is on the surface, it is a threat to birds and sea otters and wales because they have to come out to breathe. when the wind turns it up, it hits the beaches and destroys the beach ecosystems. guess exxoni alerted that the spill had happened and when do the actual efforts to try to stop it big -- begin? mr. jones: well, i am sure exxon was alerted immediately by the

crew of the ship. we are leaking oil. i know for a fact that the captain of the ship got on the radio and called the coast guard in valdez immediately, and he said, we are hard ground and evidently we are leaking some oil. and he said on the radio that he was going to try to lock the boat and get off the reef and proceed, which was just a terrifying possibility. the ship was so badly damaged, there was a good chance it would have sunk or capsized if he had succeeded in doing that. he did not, so the ship stayed on the reef and continued to leak oil. the response effort began almost immediately. the problem was there were so few resources and boats and booms and cleanup equipment available that not much could be done. so it started from a very tiny beginning and ramped up over the rest of that spring and summer.

>> whose responsibility was it spill, or did exxon have a plan for that? mr. jones: a response plan? >> did they have a response plan did alaska have a response plan? , mr. jones: the responsibility fell on exxon as the shipper. in valdez, the response plan at least in the immediate aftermath of the spill is carried out by a pipeline service company. when there is a spill, they were at the time responsible for the first three days of the response effort. so they are the ones who send out the boats and the cleanup equipment to prevent the mess and keep it from spreading. after that first three days, the spiller is supposed to take over management of the response, and exxon did that. after a relatively short time, it was exxon running the spill. >> what, what is the process of

cleaning up oil? what has to be done and what are some of the challenges with an oil spill of that magnitude? mr. jones: to oversimplify it a bit, there are two aspects of cleanup. one is containment. try not to let it spill any further than it has. the other is removal. and both are very difficult. we had a huge area that had spilled oil on it, and then some of the oil hit the beaches and immersed itself in the sand and gravel and plants and all that kind of stuff, so removal was very difficult. one of the responses to this spill was to use something called a dispersant. in the name of the dispersant used at the time was correxit. what the dispersant is supposed to do is break the oil once a guess into the water is break it

into tiny smaller globules that can be processed by bacteria and so on in the water. oil is an organic substance and given the right time, circumstances nature will , reprocess it into harmless things. the problem is correxit is pretty poisonous itself, and it is not clear it did what it was supposed to. there is some evidence that we end up with not one poison in the water but two. they tried corexit and it was a n abysmal failure. they notice all the oil on the rocks on the beach, and they had two solutions, one which was ridiculous and one which was devastating. the ridiculous one, and there is a lot of photographs of this and video, they hired people to go out on the beach with paper towels and wiped the oil off of the rocks. yes, they did. the second thing they did was they decided, well what we will , do is we will get high pressure hot water washers, and we will blast these oil beaches

with this hot water, and it will wash the oil black into the water, and then we can actually clean it up. they may have cleaned up some oil that way, not much, but they did further damage to the ecosystems with this hot water, and also blasting it deeper into the sand of the cleanup and abysmal failure for the most part. they got maybe 15% of the oil but that is really a wild guess, nobody knows. it is probably fair to say that for the most part the cleanup effort was a pr effort to show america and the world that something was being done to clean up this oil. one of the exxon officials said soon after the spill that they were going to clean it all up. of course they did not come close. >> how far did the oil spread? mr. jones: i think the furthest oil from the exxon valdez that

was documented was like 1200 or 1300 miles away. i mean, it flew down to prince william sound on the current and work its way around and actually came up to the south end of book inlet, which is where anchorage is, a completely different body of water and by sea 700 miles. we talked a few minutes ago who had come up with a response plan, and i told you that the primary responsibility lay on the spiller, which is true, but at the same time, all of the agencies federal and state that are in line to participate, they have to have their own response plans saying what they are going to do. so everybody in prince william princeevery agency in william sound was theoretically ready. as a practical matter none of them were. and they were all on the front line. the oil spill had a devastating impact on the fishing economy of

prince william sound. and that, other than people who work with the oil company in valdez, fishing was the mainstay of the economy. outside valdes it was either fishing or nothing. they get salmon out of there, shrimp, herring, crab. and after the spill the fisheries were just closed, onlyse it would have taken one boiled salmon to get the -- oiled salmon to get the market in seattle to destroy the market for years to come, so they just shut it down and said no fishing. so that was the first impact of it, and then later on it turned out some of those populations were damaged and some of them could not be fished for a while. herring was one, trout was another. the fact that fishing had been shut down, and everybody was going broke, forced this agonizing dilemma on the fishermen of prince william sound, and that was should they

hire their boats and crews and themselves out to exxon to help in the cleanup? and there were some who just would not do it. they just could not work for exxon. there were others who could. it provoked hideous divisions in prince william sound, and there was a kind of derisive term for people who worked for exxon. they were called spi llionaires, people who worked from the spill. the longer-term result of all this disruption in prince william sound was real social dysfunction. that was one of the things that was intensively studied for the group i work for, the advisory council. and they had increases in every form of family and social dysfunction that you can imagine. there was more drinking, there was more suicide, more divorces more family violence, anything bad that can happen to society, happened to those people in prince william sound.

>> how long did it take the cleanup until it was completed? mr. jones: the cleanup was intensive in the first year, and it continued i think in the summer for another year or two and then it discontinued. even today there is some oil under some beaches in prince william sound. not a lot just a few thousand , gallons, but it is a testament to the persistence of this oil, but as a cold climate. cool at least, and once the oil gets below the surface it does not degrade very fast. it has not been consumed by nature and turned into routine compounds. >> did congress ever get involved? mr. jones: congress did get involved. they passed -- i mean, they did what congress does, they passed legislation and had hearings ended investigations. the biggest was the oil pollution act of 1990 which

remedied a lot of the perceived day fax that led to the -- defects that led to the exxon valdez spill. >> what were some the key points? mr. jones: there were several. it required that tankers be escorted by two tugs all the way out of prince william sound. and those two tugs were not only there to assist the tanker, they also had response equipment on them which in theory would be able to begin the response immediately if the tanker started to leak oil. if it was possible to put a boom around the exxon valdez, it would help. the other big change, which was fiercely advocated by people in prince william sound and by alaskans in general even before the oil trade started was to require double hulls on oil tankers. is exactlye dull

what it sounds like. before double hulls you had a bunch of oil in the tanker and an inch of steel and seawater. any puncture would result in oil leak. if double hulls were used, there are two hulls separated by about 11 feet of airspace or ballast water or whatever they wanted in there, so you can get a fairly serious puncture and have no leak. it was estimated after the spill that the double hull if the exxon valdez had a double hall -- hull, the spill would have been dramatically reduced. the oil as people in spill bureaucracies called it, the oil pollution act of 1990

did require that ships coming into all american ports that carried oil had to have double hulls. they did make the deadline and now they all have double hulls. >> did this oil spill affect the oil industry's influence in the alaska legislature and also did alaska impose any regulations? mr. jones: well alaska law was , revised and regulations were revised to take some of the lessons of this spill. as far as the political climate goes -- you know, for a year or two alaskans were sort of down on the oil industry, but that passed. it is the biggest funding source of state government and i am sure the biggest source of donations to the legislature. a lot of people work in the oil industry. a lot of people know that the benefits they get from the state comes from the tax from the oil industry. and then we have in this state this thing called the alaska

permanent fund which was made up entirely from part of the oil revenue. it now stands i think at around $60 billion. the income from that fund is now starting to pay for state government because oil revenues have declined as oil production have declined. one of the uses that fund has been put to do something called the alaska permanent fund dividend. once a year the state sends every alaskan a check. it varies in size. the lowest was $1000, the highest $2200. once a year every alaskan gets this dividend, and we all know that it comes from oil money. now it is the earnings from the fund. that fund came from oil money. so as i was being earlier, oil and the oil industry has a tremendous mind share in alaska. at times it is definitely a love-hate relationship. people, a lot of people hated the oil industry because of that spill, a lot of them still do.

it kind of controls our politics. the fact is, you know, it is kind of like a bad marriage. it is not quite bad enough to get out of. >> can we talk about the bp oil spillthe that happened off the coast of louisiana? were there any similarities and did they learn anything from what had happened in alaska? mr. jones: so there are no real parallels in the operational sense. of completely different sets circumstances. what was similar for us alaskans watching from afar was the fact that the oil industry was caught flat-footed. i am sure they had all kinds of plans to keep that from happening on that oil rig and plans to deal with it when it did happen, but do any of it work? no it did not. that oil spread and spread and spread. so then what was very familiar and to a considerable extent was the same as up here was the impact on communities that lived along the coast of the gulf,

especially with the fishing communities, the occasions and so on -- the cajuns and so on. after that spill, a lot of people came to look at what we had done in the prince william sound advisory council, to have a mechanism to force citizens to have a voice in how the oil company operates in these areas. that spill was much larger than the exxon valdez, and it went on for day after day and a n inconceivable amount of time. exxon valdez was a one and done event. >> do you think that the oil industry has learned its lesson from valdez and the oil spill off the coast of louisiana? mr. jones: yes and no. yes because you know in the immediate aftermath they did respond. i made no judgment as to the sort of sincerity of their

response. if history is any guide, those lessons will be lost. the attention of the public will turn to other matters. but the attention of the oil industry on the issue of getting lighter regulations never wanes. they will always be doing that. so i have a saying about capitalism that is not quite as damning as it may sound. capitalism is a moral, it has no soul or conscience. the goal of capitalism is to minimize costs and maximize revenue. it will always do that because that is in its dna. well, capitalism is a wonderful tool for increasing economic efficiency. but it comes with a whole set of risks, and we have seen the consequences in the gulf of mexico and in prince william sound. so what society must never do is forget that it is up to society to set the rules under which

capitalism operates. because as i say, capitalism in and of itself has no soul and no morality. it will do what it has to to make money. and again, it is up to, it is up to society to never let up. because when we do, we get my condo and exxon valdez. >> c-span is live in new mexico -- >> panning for gold is very simple. if it is not grinding, you have to be -- any bigger gold, it must be removed. it keeps the gold down. roxy to be picked off because the same amount of water that will move those bigger stones might just push your gold out. we have a little different twist right at the end. you will not see this on the outdoor channels. old-timers in the circle

district tommy this one. now the water were a marble, you roll the water around the base. each time it comes around, it picks up a little bit of the dirt. any gold is under the puddle of dirt. it is like divide and conquer. you are not done panning until all that is left is nice clean gold. washes --gold russia's all over the u.s.. there was california, yukon, the alaska gold rush, so people knew thaton as word got out at yellow rock was found in fairbanks, people were coming to the interior to mind. we are at gold rich eight, we have a tour operation where we are entertaining people, guests may come up to our state am a we are trying to share the history of gold mining in fairbanks. likein the early 1900s

1906, felix pedro was in this area, 10 miles from where we are standing out, the first discovery in the fairbanks area. gold-mining put fairbanks on the map. when felix found the gold, it created the fairbanks, the little town of fairbanks. gold-mining is huge, still to this day. we want to show people how it used to be done, give them history, then write up to the modern day, as modern as you can with a gold pan. going back to 1902, and italian prospector felix pedro hit on gold 20 miles upstream. he had to rock -- walk 130 miles back to the recording district to validate. then thes word spread, circle district began to stampede into the soon to be called fairbanks district.

the river ways and transportation corridors of the day, not only the easiest places to walk but oftentimes streambeds and gravels could give a typical camp for the night you pitch your tent, you go down to the gravel and you shovel up some of that gravel from the stream into your gold pan. you see if there's any money in it. if it shows promise, you want to maybe have a bit of reduction, you should construct a screwed spot -- eight food spot. it allows him to take 100 shovelful's of gravel and reduce it through just one pan. the more experienced men knew they had to take a lot deeper. generallyold is found where the gravel meets the

bedrock. in fairbanks, they were in for a big surprise. typically there is 80 to 100 feet of rock, that is permanently frozen year-round. quick shift of operations to the wintertime and a bigger crew of men. we brought in a steam pilar, we have a group of guys working, that is called a drift operation. the men that came into the gold stream valley would stake a 20 acre claim on a creek, register and record it, and they would start setting up. right behind me is what a typical gold mine would have looked like in fairbanks between 1907 and 1915. they would stick what they hoped was a lucky spot on that piece of ground and would dig and

eight by eight foot shaft straight down. they would down -- they would dig down through the overburden and down through the frozen gravel and to bedrock. as much as 300 feet straight down. if they were lucky and they hit gold at the bottom of the shaft, face they would create a son a lot -- a tunnel off the shaft that was called a drift. for that reason, these mines were called drift mines. the men were called drifters they would use the steam from the boiler to slow down the travel. they were feel up -- philip wheelbarrows, 12 hours a day, seven days a week for five hours.

they would take it from the face of the drift across bedrock and back to the bottom of the shaft. they would fill the bucket up that was waiting for them there. when the bucket was full they would signal the engineer on the surface. the engineer would engage at that signal. he would lift a full bucket right up and out of the shaft. the excavated all winter, what the miners were looking for was plastered gold. would go into the

winter dumps and they would spend all summer while the water was running in the creek shoveling paydirt to catch the plaster gold. they saw what 10 or 12 guys could do, the next step was kind of obvious. were ready to sell by about 1920. a couple of boys in fairbanks got the idea, they had seen this happen before. they formed their own company and began to consolidate the claim. they got some east coast investors involved. the timing was everything. in mid july, 1923 when president harding came up to drive the golden spike in the alaskan railroad, every company wanted in business. the open water port to the tiny

, the companyanks began to move heavy freight into interior alaska immediately. the all-terrain heavy-duty keystone drill with the ability to deliver a full pile if you frozen soil down through the gravel. eventually, determining the dollar value of the bedrock. the mighty engineers use these drill logs to determine the best methods of mining. some rock would be moved with the hydraulic method, tried and true california gold rush. it would be processed through heady dredges. although these processes would require lots and lots of water. they hired the engineers to his name wasblem,

davidson, he engineered what is known as the davidson bit. a waterway over 90 miles long just northeast of here. it brings 180,000 gallons of water to the fairbanks to -- to the fairbanks district every day up until 1967. as we come through this clearing knob.you can see a that is about 150 feet down towards the davidson ditch. eventually, 36 inch piping brought that water to the valley. feet above the00 valley floor. oor was quite a bit higher. if you look into the horizon, all of those trees, they were

embedded in the original valley. you will be able to see for yourself. before the mining began in this valley, there was maybe well over 100 feet of rock. george will explain how the rock was taking care of. >> once the fairbanks exploration company had the part plant build and the water supply, the davidson ditch, they could begin ground preparation. it was a two step process that went right along with the layers of material present here in the ground. was just frozen in mud, no golden it. all overburden had to be removed from company claims. they removed it with these big water cannons called hydraulic giants. they were taking water off of the ditch into a pond. they were pumping the water through a series of pipes and high pressure.

workers called pipers would hold on to the giant to they were operating, pointed straight ahead, and use the high pressure water to wash away the overburden. layer by layer, they would blast into the creek and the creeks carried the overburden away. withapers, working technology giants stripped -- of acres of drowned ground. if i was standing on this spot next to the engineer before the company stripped this ground, i would have been standing about 100 feet straight up in the air. the engineer creek originally ran. this is an artificial valley created by washing away all the overburden to expose the gravel. once the gravels were exposed they were still frozen and needed to be thought out before dredging.

the company thought gravel using cold water points, like this one right here. he points themselves are just hollow pipes. they could be easily screwed together as they were driven down. the starting point, like this one, they have a double edge and a little hole in it for water outlet. the company would set the points up on the base, hold it stable in the ground, and adjustable aamp was about waist high and 24 pound sliding hammer. workers called point drivers would pick up hammers and drop it on the clamp. they would pick it up and drop it, and pick it up and drop it. 12 hours a day, seven days a week, rain or shine. paid $.33 were being an hour in the late 20's and early 30's. at the same time these guys were doing the hard labor, they were taking water off the davidson

ditch, they were forcing it down that pipe and when the water came up and hit the frozen ground beneath it, it would bounce back towards the surface and follow an eight foot cylinder around each individual point. the company set the points up in that werel triangles spaced so the eight foot cylinders of ground would meet and they would have it all the way to bedrock. an extreme around of work involved in ground preparation took an average of seven years to go from an untouched piece of ground to a piece of ground that was stripped of overburden, that was thawed, and ready for a trench to dig for a full season. 200 days was the target for each trench every year. now we are going to roll up the dredge itself. the most important thing about the dredges, the powerplant. all of the dredges brought into

the fairbanks district were electrically powered. they built one powerplant in downtown fairbanks. they ran the distribution lines into the dredge camp. a substation would break out the power for the camps as well is another line that would run out to the dredges. all the buildings will see today were originally company buildings. none of them were right out in front of the dredge. all this land in front of the dredge was bare land, stripped and thought, ready for mining. i'm going to turn over to a well-respected man who did his college thesis on this, george. take it away. ge: i'm standing at the main back of the gold dredge number eight. this is one of eight machines that was owned and operated by the fairbanks exploration

company between 1928 and 1964. this machine, herself and until 1959,om 1928 she has been on this pond since that last day of work. company had a starting point based on their test drilling. at that point, they escalated a big pay all the way down to bedrock. when it was completely assembled, they opened up the davidson ditch, philby holds water, the dredge floated up to the surface and they plugged it into the power supply back in fairbanks. august 20, 19 28, this machine was ready to start digging. a gold dredge is a simple machine that does three things. it chewed up gold bearing gravel, swallowed gold, and spit out rock. gravel, thating up was done by the big bucket line. the frame that is sticking down is called the latter. ladder, 35 foot digging

meaning it could cut 35 feet below water level to reach bedrock. an operation was a continuous cubic foot six buckets. in operation, the continuous chain was like a big chainsaw blade that was cutting in reverse. the chain of buckets would move around would move around. each bucket would come up from underneath, dig into the face of the pond, get a load of gold bearing gravel. it would carry that load up the ladder, drop it into the hopper on the third deck of the dredge and that bucket would come back down to get in other load. number eight could move 22 buckets a minute at top speed. cubic yardsut 7000 of gold bearing gravel in a 24-hour shifts. all the material elevated, dropped in the hopper, the hopper that down into the screen.

this is a big cylinder. it is 36 feet long, has a six foot inside dynamic or. diameter.oot inside it was perforated with holes along its entire length. about a quarter inch of diameter on top, bigger as you go back to about 5/8 of an inch. pumpedd water getting out of the pond at about 9000 gallons per minute. you take the gold bearing gravel, add water, and shake it up in that screen. the heavy gold would separate, sink, fall down through the holes in the travel, and on the the dredge.of anything bigger than the biggest hole would continue downhill. it would fall off the tropical -- it would fall off, hit a trim -- could hit a conveyor belt, and it would be spit out behind into big bottles of rock. the last pile left by number

eight is right here next to the train tracks. anything smaller than the holes on the trovel would fall through. there are 16 boxes on this bridge, eight on either side. they start high and sloped down towards the outside. long onesinto four that go downhill and eventually hook up into the tail and back down into the pond. those are the three steps in gold dredging. andbucket line, screen boxes slowing gold, and the big factor in the back is spitting out rocks. 24 hours a day, seven days a year, it had to be shut down every 10-15 days to play cleanup. that meant recovering the gold from the dredge. and that four our cleanup, a special crew would get into the dredge, go up into the second deck, disassemble them

completely and gather all the .aterial those were called the concentrates. they would scoop up the concentrates and load them into boxes like this one here. when the box was full, they would close the lid, put a lock on it, it took two men to pick up this box when it was full and move it from the dredge to the truck that was waiting outside. transportedxes through the gold from at the company compound in downtown fairbanks. once the material got to the gold room, the guys working in there would open up the door of a big furnace and they would pack the concentrate inside. it would seal the door and apply heat, up to 2300 degrees enougheit, that was hot to burn off impurities and velti gold down into liquid form. once the gold was molten, they would open up the door of the

furnace, ticket for it, and they would be gold into brick molds like this one. it is a 700 outs brick, 58 pounds. once the bricks were cool, they would stop them on the table and do cleanup work. almost unbelievably, to us today, the company would take each individual 58 pound brick of alaskan gold, rap that brick in brown paper, put a stamp on it, and they would mail it to san francisco. thank you george for a wonderful explanation. as we roll past, i want to point out that in the spring, to get an early jump on the season, they had their own eyes. upy would send another crew on the davidson ditch, dynamite that waterway so they can bring the spring melt in to get an early jump on the season. the mining season, and normal season, the 100 days

to well over 200 days, the dredges became the principal employer in the fairbanks district. becoming the principal in foyer -- employer by over 40 years, the dredge company establish their reputation. there were shut down briefly for world war ii because of the shortages. they came back after the war with every intention to pick it up where they left off. however, the company was facing significant challenges. a lot of the more experienced workers for one reason or another did not come back from the war. goods and services had gone up quite a bit implies. indging shut down completely 1958, the last of the company in 1964.ere poured out >> fairbanks exploration company had a gold dredge, eight of them , number eight happens to be the one that we have here behind me.

it collected thousands and thousands of ounces of gold. it ran from 1928 until 1959. it dug its last bucket of their in 1959. gold-mining has kind of been revitalized. there is hard rock mining here. we have the fort knox gold mine, which has been extended 10 years here. outside of fairbanks there is another operation that may be starting up. that is about 75 miles north of us. of it.ind of all part we are in the gold stream valley. it is named gold stream for a reason. there is a tremendous amount of gold that has been taken out of this valley. thousands of ounces of gold in its entirety. gold.e sure there is no >> fishing has been a big part

of alaska basically forever. it has always been known for its salmon production. the most knows we have pristine waters basically in the world. the efficient that are derived from these waters, i don't think it gets any better. the seafood industry is one of the cornerstones of the alaskan economy. it employs nearly 60,000 people each year and accounts for one .5 billion in wages and income federal government spending and mining is one of the key economic drivers in the state. we are at eight seafood plant in juneau, alaska. this is kind of a family thing. i am raised in a town called petersburg, a little south of juneau.

petersburg is seafood. my whole family is directly or indirectly involved in it. this is a family business. my son and i own it. in 1995ed with one ship catching shrimp. now become company does over 13 million pounds a year. truly a success story, the american dream. it is very doable. the seafood industry in alaska is about a $5 billion industry. nationwide it is closer to $12 billion or $13 billion. if you follow it through processing, distribution, retailers, right to the kitchen counter or to the restaurant it is a $13 billion industry.

there is about 100,000 jobs across the country connected to alaskan seafood. here it is known as a $5 billion industry without you added from when the fish are pulled the salmon on the boat where he earned income and pays his crew. he just is goods and services to support his fishing operation which creates its own multiplier impacts. --s is in smaller act smaller communities where there might not be as much economic activity. the buyer employs workers to process the fish and his taxes to stay and government. and other of economic multipliers across the state. the tax is a by the seafood industry are incredibly important for many local governments across the state. in the absence of that funding, they would not have resources to provide basic services and infrastructure. >> we do not catch ourselves.

we are a buyer, processor, reseller. everything we do is caught by independent fishermen, independent businesses. a lot of them are family operated so you might see a boat come in that has a load of crab or halibut. it might be a father, mother, or a few kids aboard. it is not unlike farms in the midwest. these are all independent individuals and they catch and we buy. industry the seafood is a seasonal. it is less so than it has been. state, the ways as a industry looks for a way to add value to the product that is harvested less seasonally than it was. salmon is sort of the heart of the industry across the state. as the fish return to inside waters from the high seas, that

is when fishermen have the opportunity to catch them and processors process them. that is a busy time of year from june through august and into september. our peak season is july and august. that is when we have the largest salmon returns. starting off in january we will be doing some pacific cod, now we will move into crab season which is typically mid-february. mid february, in they will go for a week or two wl or months. halibut,ove into march. that will go on for seven or eight months. into the summertime, the salmon start coming. the product we are currently

doing right now is crab. they are coming into the facility. as you can see, we have some ice on them to keep them cool and keep them a little calm so they are not jumping around too much. it will go to what we call the brushing. they are rubbing the crab with a brush. cleanome out bright and after the cooking process. crabs, whatng the we want the crabs to do is when they go through the cookers, we want the crab to kind of be tucked in nice and neat so we don't have legs sticking out. as with the bandage is for. they will be put in the cooker with the bands on and that is how they will come out. sometimes we will do custom orders where the buyer would like -- this will be called ocean run.

in some cases we have buyers that will order a specific size. as you can see, we are weighing these crab out because you have different size frames. the standard way is about 1.5 to 2 pounds. sometimes you break it down into quarters. then they are put in proper baskets. alaska is a little bit different than the sum of the west coast states that are baked crab producers. our minimum shell sizes a little bit larger. i think on the west coast have a show requirement of 6.25 where we are 6.5. the average size of our crab are larger because we have to fill a larger shell which means a larger crab. we only process males. females, when they are

identified are put back in the water. that is to ensure we have crab for generations to come. what you are seeing is the basket of crab is being measured for size and weight. it is put into the cooker, it will be in there for 17 minutes. go tohat point, they will another tank over here. we have chilled water circulating throughout the tank. rapidly drop the interior temperature of the crab so we do not continue cooking. we all know its face, you take them out of the oven and they will keep on cooking for a while. theotally want to control temperature, that has a lot to do with the quality of the crab.

the temperature of this crab, as you can see, we will check it. what is important is when you go , the crab is at a certain temperature. if the crab is really warm and goes in to the cage and has a not aalt uptake it is desirable product. it is important that we control the temperature of the crab. about -- it will sit for about 35 minutes, when it comes out it is frozen pretty good. to kind of put the final touch on these crabs, we will put basically a sugar water glaze on them to prevent any freezer drying.

this will totally encapsulate that crab in basically a coat of ice. everybody has them in the freezer, and the kids drop some popsicles, and it stays like that for years. that is the idea of the sugar water, it doesn't evaporate fast. it keeps the crab encapsulated so it will not go into what we call freezer burn if you will. they going to bags, the bags get sealed. at that point we have certain net weights that we are achieving. in this case, i believe it is 30 pounds. eating that the crabs have a little bit different size to 30 poundshit the exactly and you box. you can see the yellow crates that have been pretty weighed will have that net 30 pounds in them. these people will grab them and

put them in the box. then it is on to the next. most of our product is sold domestically sold in the u.s.. we are really happy about that. europe.ell into we sell a lot of caviar. , as well as lot japan. >> a little of resources have played a lot of particular roles. you have a very long history in that regard, and it continues to play a very important role

across coastal alaska and interior alaska as well. the first industrial work in alaska native back probably 850 years. the fisheries management was for statementer in 1959, and since then, it has grown steadily, and we have learned to diversify our product space and our increasingly competitive in the global marketplace, one of the key drivers and a very healthy and sustainable industry. >> they are under the watchdog of the salmon industry in alaska, in the state. once they have a certain estimates, what the returns will be, one thing they do not want to do is we have enough fish

release that will on and continue year after year. they have a lot rules in place, very closely monitored. if you were to go out today on the water, unc fish and game enforcement making sure most are staying in the place they are supposed to play the rules in place for what they call a artain amount for attac -- t.a.c, and that stands for a catch.allowable of fishlaska department and game has been are important, diligence in establishing commercial fishing. sustaineds with the year some key management tools that have been employed over the last couple of years includes a limited fisheries program, which

in the 1970's control the participation and commercial fisheries and alaska instead of a wide open derby type style. you have to have a permit to commercial fish. that is the key measures. ifq system,s, the the fishing quota system, put a it, mega saver, better managed. >> a lot of people are employed in the state, there's a lot of and the fuelroduct companies that supply fuel to the grocery stores, all of the transportation, it is big. here,food went away from the state would be a skeleton of what it is. it plays a huge role.

>> everett, alaska is located 196 miles south of the arctic circle. fairbanks, we visited the scene of river -- china rivers state recreation area.

>> up next on c-span's alaska tour, author sarah isto on her book "the fur farms of eaks to theom the p almost disappearance. from beingfarms went -- two very noticeable. thes a great industry for russians, and then the americans took over.

it was the third-largest industry, behind gold-mining and salmon fishing. it was important enough that they governor hired a veterinarian to take care of the fur farms. the veterinarian was the only one in the territory, except for another one that had quick to start fur farming. it started in 1749. it was a very small start. the russian captain of a ship that was coming for seals and sea otters, started at the commander islands for the winter, to make a crossing to the islands. and he picked up a litter of foxes. these were very special foxes because they did not turn white in the winter. they were very special, they were called blue foxes.

the coat was the thickest. and because dark furs were very popular in moscow and even more importantly in china, they would buy furs. he picked up his special litter, talked to the ateu people about not killing these animals and in fact feeding them somewhat in the winter. he stayed for two years, and he said i will come back after a while and we will trap these foxes, and i will bring you trade goods. ateu island is at the tip of the aleutians, and you can see the islands make a sweeping curve, and you can see that it ends with ateu island and kamchatka. thethat was the route that

russians were taking to all these rich furs. and they would soon exterminate all these foxes on the commander islands as well. but at the time of the purchase of alaska in 1867, the russians had quite a number of farms going. the largest one, the americans took it over. the very early farms, both the russians and americans, most were using islands as their fences, because foxes do not like to swim. most of them were wild, running foxes, being fed by food that was put out.

and as it became more sophisticated, they built track houses, where they had the boxes and a little door that would open when a fox walked over, and unlockedg time, they that door, and then they sorted the foxes. it ended up taking more popular and soon there were all sorts of animals being raised in cages on the mainland, skunks and raccoons and chinchillas and rabbits, mostly in people's houses. so what a fur farm looks like varied greatly over a few centuries. furs have been used for various purposes back to genesis. and they are very important in the north. china is cold. russia is cold. hats, coats, linings. the north.at the same time, thea parallel market for elegant

women, those who had palaces in russia that were not heated. and to have a fur lining for your dress or your bodice was wonderful for its looks, and its warmth. and of course, just furs for beauty. and during the early development of the automobile, those were open cars and furs were very popular. in 1930, which was close to the peak, there were more than 600. the population of the territory at that time was 60,000. so there was 60,000 people in more than 600 fur farms. the thing that changed fur farming, of course, was the market. and during world war ii, synthetic warm materials were

developed by the americans. the germans were still using fur, but at the end of the time you could get warm close without clothing without fur. so the synthetic fur had a big market. and people who were offended by the idea of killing foxes and so on said, we don't need this at all, because we no longer needed for warmth. and that helped peta get started, and the protests against it. but fashion changed. after the war, a lot of people moved to california and didn't need a fur coat. and the new rising, people who after the warde were buying washing machines and

cars. they did not need furs. the last fur farm closed in 1993. alaska has had a lot of boom and bust industries, including fur farming, and people moved on to do something else. after the war, we had a huge construction boom. at that time, gold-mining was also declining, but then of course oil came. so people were pretty flexible about moving on to something else. i think there is some misunderstanding about fur farms and their cruelty. at least on the islands, it was not an industry of deliberate cruelty. but it was one where everyone was a little bit ignorant about

the consequences, the unintended consequences. >> up next, a conversation with mary shields, the first woman who completed the iditarod, the dogsled race from anchorage to nome alaska. mary: come in. the bottom drawer. the basement drawer. this is tiffany. >> mary, what was it like when you finished?

relief, because i've have been going for so long. could had come in, and i see something at the finish line. you would take your hand out of your warm mitten and thaw them out, but i was not going to do that. i wanted to see what was waiting for me, and it was a group of women, and they had a saider, and the banners tha "you have 1974 -- come a long way, baby." very nice to see after 1000 miles on the trail. >> what were you doing before? mary: i was teaching swimming

lessons out in the villages. but we were out in summer. i did not see the dog teams. up,uld see the dogs tied but i do not think, "oh, those are sled dogs." i did have snow skis and shoes to get around. but my mail came on the train, tooted thead mail, he hestle, and this one time was really tooting, so i knew there must be something special. a couplehold, it was of my friends who come to see me. a brownie dropout. i knew nothing about living in the woods.

asked if they could learn how to stay there and learn how to live the way that people did. they learn how to pick berries, smoked salmon, look for most ose, and they learn how to drive a daunting. -- a dog team. once said "you know what you need, mary. you need some sled dogs." it just so happens they had some extra. then the train comes, and outcomes a black dog, the name fluffy dog -- then a fluffy red two dogn a dogsled, harnesses, and the only on thetions were a taste back because the. -- back of the dog sled.

two sentences. "dear mary, there is nothing to it. just put the dogs in front of the sled." i tied the dogs to the front of the sled, and they are in a big dog fight. on, and i was crying and screaming. i unclip them, and they ran to the cabin. i drive all that dog food myself. ?> how did you train them mary: when mark and sally were running them, i added one of the put them then i

together, and i just praised them. >> when did the idea of raising dogstogether, and i just praised come in? met my future husband on thinking trip in 19 70, i . in november, the days are getting darker and colder and shorter, so for the next 20 years, we went on a month low camping trip, and in the month of march amazed is getting brighter and sunnier, and i just loved it. when we went to canada to visit a friend, and december is not a good time to trouble because it is dark and cold and we had to snowshoe quite a bit of the day. , andt there christmas day we can home, we were back on snow shoes, and when i got home, i started getting rumors about

race, so it was a chance to see a thousand miles of alaska and not have to break trail on snow shoes. so i called up the committee and said i would like to enter the race. "who are you?" i said "mary." "how many dogs do you have?" "six." "you have to have eight." "i'll get two more." "ok, you are in." i was lucky to get in on an early year. sometimes you have to go rescue them. year, two where women. i was lucky. >> can you give background on race?ditarod

how long is it? is 1000 miles from anchorage, alaska all the way to nome, alaska. in 1925, they had a good area epidemic -- diphtheria epidemic. celebrates whente dogs came to the rescue. it goes on the yukon river, it goes along the ocean. terrain.rent types of now it is part prehistoric trail system, and it is quite well marked. back then, you might see a marker on a tree and then nothing for a couple of miles, but now it is well marked. they have a bicycle race, a junior iditarod. it is quite well used. >> before you and your friends decided to compete in the race,

was there ever a history of women competing in the iditarod? mary: no, it was the second year they had it. the first year, they were just trying to see if the trail connected, and it was all men. i do not think too many of them, maybe 10 or so. >> what was the reaction to you and your friend signing up? mary: i do not know what i find out, but i know when i would pull into a checkpoint, sometimes men who were there with suddenly take off. and i would say that is interesting, they were going to and they night there, did not want to be seen traveling with me, because i was going as slow as a woman. >> can you go to your first day, i guess your first overnight of the iditarod, were you nervous subtle? mary: - - at all? mary: oh, i was very nervous.

we were by the ocean, and i had oceanbeen lashing by the -- mushing by the ocean. i didn't really know where i was. it was dark of course, at night, and i was wondering whether this was such a good idea. i only had eight dogs and i was a little nervous. and then i got to the first checkpoint and i got my supplies. and i thought, if i could make it to the first checkpoint, i could probably make it to the second. i broke it down into 50-mile segments, i could do 50 miles, i could do another 50 miles. and as the trail went on i got more and more comfortable and really enjoyed it. >> the dogsledding aspect of it, when you were setting up camp, were you camping? mary: you are in a race. you are not camping. you are trying to get to the

finish line faster than those other teams. and we find that the dogs that are happiest and healthiest put on the best performance. we run them on the same routine that we train them on. most people put in 1000 or 2000 miles during training. you can't tell the dogs what to do unless you have trained them properly to do that. so we run them for four hours or five hours at a stretch, depending on trail conditions. and then you make them stop and rest of them for an equal amount of time, four to five hours. the musher would love to recuperate 100%, but you are doing chores at the rest stop when the dogs are sleeping. so it is a different thing. and you don't have time to make the campfire, melt the snow, and make their food. you carried in a cooler, like a coleman cooler you take a picnic. but it's not frozen anymore, and you can scoop it out and feed the dogs, and then they can go to sleep and digested while they are resting.

you want to not feed them before you take off, because then they will just regurgitate it. and your food is not just boxes of macaroni and cheese, it is you would love to see your food coming down on skis, but it does not. you have room for the dog food. and your food is not just boxes of macaroni and cheese, it is real meals that you have cooked and frozen. and on the trail, all you have to do is thaw it out and eat it. pizza is very popular. you are creating fat content when you are out in the day and night, and with pizza you can heat it up on your campfire and have a hot meal in no time. a friend of mine was sponsored would eatll, and he burritos the whole time. would quit five or six

burritos inside his parka to thaw it out, and when he was hungry, he would fish out five or six burritos inside his parka to thaw it out, and he was hungry he would fish one out of his coat. when have you chores done, you want to rest but you don't pitch the tent. you're not going to get that comfortable. you just lay down on your big parka with your boots on and have a loud alarm on your wristwatch. you might just get to sleep, and 10 minutes later, the alarm goes off. you have to get up and take off. >> how long did it take you to complete the race? mary: it took me 28 days, which was very long. the new record is eight days, 14 hours. so a lot has changed. sit-down. senit down. you are supposed to catch it. i have had a few physical problems the past two years, i

broke my hip so i haven't been on a slide for two years. but i intend to be on it this coming winter. i won't race, but i like to go out and see were my neighbors are in check the traps. i just had five dogs. i wanted to mush until i was 60. that seemed reasonable. and now i am 73, so i don't need a great big number of dogs. that i can't handle. but i have five dogs, and they are the sweetest dogs and all of alaska. >> what would your device beat anyone who was watching, who wants to join in the iditarod or compete in the iditarod? mary: if they are not a dog musher to begin with, i would encourage them to volunteer, workout on the trail, be one of the checkers at the checkpoints or help at the start and finish, and then run dogs for a couple of years, going camping trips and learn how to take care of yourself, and then sign up for the race. it is the ultimate thing you can

do with your dog team. don't rush it. you can get yourself in serious trouble if you go out before you know what to do. >> this visit to alaska was part whichpan's cities tour, features various stops along the country. you can view more at c-span.org /citiestour. >> tonight on "q&a," historian talks about his biography on the 23rd president of the united states, benjamin harrison. ,harles: at his house people flocked, and his campaign manager said -- this is the thing to do. let people come to you. so for the election, that is what happened. he would stay home, he would have visiting delegations from

around the state, from around the country, special interest groups, because minors, causing farmers, whatever, they would come, he would give them a short to theirostly attuned own interests, but something that would resonate with people, generally. he had his own stenographer take down what was said, and then he would go over what was said, make sure it was what he wanted people to read. he would give it to the associated press. the next morning, it was in newspapers all over the country. onhistorian charles calhoun c-span's "q&a." >> say stands "washington journal -- c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tomorrow morning, as part of our campaign 28 in coverage, we wta