Crow Creek Mine

Crow Creek Mine is a working gold-mining operation a few miles up Crow Creek Road from Girdwood, one of the oldest continuously worked placer mines in Alaska. Eight original log cabins from the 1890s are preserved on site as a small open-air museum, and the owners run a tour, sell pans of gravel, and let visitors keep whatever they find.

The setting — a deep forested creek valley framed by the Chugach — is as much of a draw as the history. Plan a couple of hours, longer if you actually pan. Open summer only.

things to do sight museum
A story
Crow Creek was discovered in 1896 and is still on the National Register of Historic Places. The current owners — descendants of the original prospectors who took over the operation in the 1960s — still pan the creek commercially and reportedly pull tens of thousands of dollars in gold dust out of the gravel each year, alongside the tourists.