Crow Creek Mine home to oldest non-native structures in the Municipality of Anchorage

Ken Smith/Turnagain Times Kate Toohey, Nate Williamson and their eight month old son Levi, stand on the porch of the mess hall built in 1889. It is one of eight structures at the Crow Creek Mine in Girdwood that are listed as the oldest non-native structures in Anchorage.

By Rachel Drinkard
Turnagain Times Correspondent

In a town where even recent construction seems to quickly fall prey to mother nature’s whims, the eight original buildings built by Gold Rush miners in 1889 at Crow Creek Mine have held up rather well.
Well enough, anyway, to be listed as the oldest non-native structures in the Anchorage Municipality, according to state historian Jo Antonson.
“It’s not easy to maintain,” said mine manager and resident Nate Williamson, originally of Hershey, PA. “We don’t get to go away to Hawaii in the winter, somebody has to stay here and shovel the snow off of the roofs every time it snows.”
Other improvements to the aged structures include re-framing in most of the out buildings, and more in-depth improvements in some of the more livable structures such as the original mess hall.
“I remember when I was really little, the original floor in the mess hall where we were living at the time was so uneven with so many cracks that when we finished our bath in our big old tub, we would just dump it out on the floor because it ran right through,” said owner Kate Toohey, who took her first steps in the mess hall and has spent most of her life at Crow Creek Mine.
These days, the mess hall, reportedly the second building built at the site after the first structure burnt down soon after construction, has been relegated to museum status, still sporting the original wood stoves and antiques but with a newer, less rickety floor.
The residential home on the property, which has always been lived in and now houses Toohey, Williamson and their eight month old son Levi, has seen the most improvements over the years, including several additions and a floor renovation which revealed a rusting safe beneath a trap door.
“It was obviously once the manager’s safe, used for storing gold and money,” said Williamson. “The door was completely rusted off and all it contained was a couple of rusted tobacco cans, but it was pretty exciting.”
The mess hall and manager’s house join the meat cache, grandpa’s cabin, the commissary, ice house, barn and blacksmith shop as structures built in 1889.
“All of the buildings and facilities here are completely privately maintained, we don’t accept grants or outside funds to keep it up, but we can stay on the Historic Registry as long as we don’t damage the historic significance of the site,” said Williamson. Williamson pointed out that the mine is, and has nearly always been, a family run affair since Toohey’s parents began helping one of the original managers, Arnie Erickson, run the mine as he got older.
“He was our neighbor in Anchorage,” said Toohey. “My parents were the first people he ever trusted to not cheat him since they weren’t miners and just genuinely liked being out here and wanted to help him.”
Eventually this relationship led to a complicated land transfer and the Toohey’s relocating to the mine on a full-time basis.
“It was a little different,” Kate said of growing up in the sometimes secluded spot, “but we were in school and we had friends so it wasn’t that weird. We took snowmachines to get to school in winter because the road wasn’t maintained, and I remember my dad bringing groceries back on cross country skis, but it didn’t seem strange to us.”
Though Crow Creek Road is easily accessible in the summer, approximately two-and-a-half miles from the turn-off at Alyeska Highway, it’s still remains a hidden outpost to many travelers.
“It’s amazing to me how many people have lived in Anchorage their whole lives and never even knew we existed,” said Williamson.
And indeed, it appeared like one might almost need a time machine to reach the mine as this reporter looked around one sunny afternoon. The rhubarb basks in the fleeting sunlight, soda cans cool in a small spring-fed pool of water, and the old Model A Ford that greets visitors as they work through the entrance to the mine, waits to be put to work somewhere on the banks of Crow Creek.
The hydraulic giants no longer roar, chewing down the banks of the creek, and while the creek itself has shifted over 300 feet down the valley as miners sifted through the ancient glacier beds, mining activity continues through a steady stream of tourists and miners looking for a little excitement in their lives and glitter in their pans.