THE ROCK DUMP: ALASKA-JUNEAU USES NEW TRAM TO CARRY WASTE 
"The rock from the crusher runs over belts where workmen pick off the quartz and put it on a conveyor allowing the waste rock to keep on moving." ASL-P306-027
August 13, 1920 -- 
The Alaska-Juneau mine yesterday began using the new tram which carries the waste rock from the mill to the rock dump. This permits the full utilization of the plant which has been installed to separate the ore from the waste rock. The rock from the crusher runs over belts where workmen pick off the quartz and put it on a conveyor allowing the waste rock to keep on moving. This process permits the doubling or better of the milling capacity.
"The completion of the dumping arrangements, which include the railway to carry away the waste, marks the completion of plans that were worked out more than a year ago." JDCM Gallwas Collection
The mill now is crushing an average of 2500 tons per day. This will be increased as fast as labor can be secured. The new process of separating the good ore from the waste will require the mining of far more greater tonnage that was required when all the rock taken out was being put through the mill.
JDCM Gallwas Collection
The completion of the dumping arrangements, which include the railway to carry away the waste, marks the completion of plans that were worked out more than a year ago.  
 
By the late 1930s, the layout of the rock dump was essentially complete. ASL-P294-066.
President F.W. Bradley, speaking recently in San Francisco, said the adoption of the plan to separate the ore that carried good values from that which carries no gold (or so little that it could be milled only at a loss) had settled beyond question the fate of the Alaska-Juneau mine. He declared that it may be accepted as absolutely proven that the problems of the Alaska-Juneau had been successfully solved. And that the property is without question destined to become a great and profitable mine. He said the question is now simply one of getting enough labor to produce the additional tonnage that will be required to work the mill and to provide the haulage. (edited and abridged)  
Bradley was correct. Within the decade, the A-J had become one of the world's most profitable underground gold mines. 
Extraction of the waste rock, chiefly as fill for Downtown, began on a large scale in the 1960s. Photo date 1970. USFS hs070383
 
 
By 2018, the waste rock was nearly gone, and the area had been given over to industrial and commercial development.
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