Conrad (Yukon)
| Conrad | |||
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| Location in Yukon | |||
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Territory : | Yukon | ||
| Coordinates : | 60 ° 4 ′ N , 134 ° 34 ′ W | ||
| Residents : | 0 (status:) | ||
.jpg) Remains of the Mountain Hero Tramway |
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Conrad is a ghost town in Yukon , Canada that existed between 1899 and 1914 due to silver finds. Between 1905 and 1912, the American John Conrad led the Conrad Consolidated Mines .
Like many prospectors who had moved to the Yukon in the course of the Klondike gold rush , the American John Conrad (1855–1928) also looked for precious metals in the region. In July 1899 gold and silver were found on the Windy Arm of Tagish Lake , so that thousands of gold and silver seekers appeared around Carcross , which at that time was still called Caribou Crossing .
Within a few years, John Conrad managed to get almost all of the claims so that most of the men worked for him. In March 1905, mining began on Montana Mountain. In June, Conrad estimated the deposits to a value of 12 million dollars . Hundreds of workers were drawn to the Town of Conrad , or simply Conrad , as the place was soon to be called, and shops, hotels, churches and a telephone line to Carcross were built. The Gleaner , a steamboat, provided a boat service twice a week.
In order to get the silver from the mountain, to bring it by ship to Carcross and from there by rail to Skagway on the coast of Alaska , a lot of capital had to be made available. In mid-July, Conrad traveled to Seattle , where he acquired a corresponding device. Conrad invested $ 80,000 to build a material ropeway for his ore that overcame 6 km and more than 1,200 vertical meters. 80 ore buckets hung from the wire rope, each of which held twelve cubic feet (over 0.3 m³). The journey took 50 minutes from the mine to the valley station on Windy Arm. In August, 60 men were already working on the railway, and another 100 on packing paths, roads and buildings. The government had a road built to the valley station.
Conrad raved that his city would replace Dawson as the capital of the Yukon Territory. In 1907 there were already 350 men working in the mines, 150 continued to search for silver deposits. Six hotels were built in the city, a hospital, a police station and a telegraph station, as well as numerous shops and blacksmiths. Despite the enormous cost of mining and transportation, Conrad kept the company going even though his fortune shrank.
The fact that Conrad sued the Whitepass Railway , which in his opinion demanded five times inflated transport prices, had a serious impact . The owners, for their part, argued that they had very high costs due to the extreme climate and the shape of the surface. An international commission found that the railroad could not cut prices without going bankrupt itself. So the Conrad Consolidated Mines went bankrupt.
In April 1912 "Colonel" John Conrad left the territory. He died of heart failure in Seattle on November 27, 1928.
The silver mine had long since closed by this time and the site was abandoned in 1914.
