James Moore Elmer (b. 1875)
	
James Moore Elmer was born in Walla Walla, Washington and raised in Baker, Oregon. He worked at local mines to earn college tuition at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland. He completed the course in 1899 and was sent north by Howell Hinds to help establish the first gold-dredging operation.((“Elmer family papers, ca. 1880-1949.” University of Alaska, Fairbanks. 2019 website: https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/data/309442518)) He built a bucket dredge on the Stewart River in 1898.((Warren Yeend, "Gold Placers of the Circle District, Alaska - Past, Present and Future." US Geological Survey Bulletin 1943. 1991: 13.)) He placed it on Cassiar Bar on the Yukon River near Little Salmon sometime around 1899.((Yukon Archives, V. Faulkner MSS 135 83/50 f.4. Conversation with Ray Stewart at age 84.))

By 1901, the Hinds dredge was working successfully on Bonanza Creek.((“Elmer family papers, ca. 1880-1949.” University of Alaska, Fairbanks. 2019 website: https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/data/309442518)) A tourist in the area was told that the company was paying Skookum Jim a royalty of $90,000 that year.((William Seymour Edwards, //In To the Yukon.// Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company. 1905: 154.)) The gold in the gold pan on the cover of Cantwell’s souvenir photo album “The Klondike” was furnished by J. Moore Elmer, the manager of the mining operation on the Bonanza Discovery Claim. The album was produced for the meeting of the American Institute of Mining Engineers and depicted Yukon mining in 1905.((Joel Natanblut, “Yukon Gold Mining in 1905.” The Dark Room, The McGill Library digitization team, 2019 website: https://blogs.library.mcgill.ca/digitization/tag/klondike-river-valley-yukon-gold-discoveries/)) There are many photos of the Elmer dredge at Bonanza Discovery at Yukon Government Historic Sites.((Candy Wagaman collection))
	
Elmer left the Yukon in 1907 to assist Hinds in other ventures but struck out on his own in 1912 and headed for Alaska.((“Elmer family papers, ca. 1880-1949.” University of Alaska, Fairbanks. 2019 website: https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/data/309442518)) The Elmer Dredge, called after its owner J. M. Elmer, was floated down the Yukon River to become the first dredge in the Circle, Alaska area. It was dismantled and hauled overland to Mastodon Creek in 1912. It operated during the summers of 1912 and 1913 but was too small to reach bedrock and was abandoned.((Warren Yeend, "Gold Placers of the Circle District, Alaska - Past, Present and Future." US Geological Survey Bulletin 1943. 1991: 13.)) The buckets had a 3.5 cubic foot capacity and the dredge measured seventy feet. Several pieces of the dredge could still be seen along Mastodon Creek in 1991.((Christopher Haley, Manual Bonila, Richard Meyer, Warren Yeend, James Lienkaemper and William Perry, //The Red Butte Conglomerate.// U.S. Geological Survey, 1991: 13.))
	
Following the failed dredging venture in the Circle district, in 1914 Elmer moved on to Slate Creek in the Chistochina drainage. There he was involved in the MEW (Matkins, Elmer, Walker) Mining Company and Slate Creek Mining Company. In the early 1920s, he also participated in the Onek Company Ltd., which developed mines at Keno Hill, Yukon. The silver-lead veins in the Mascot group lay at the head of a small tributary of the Watson River near Bennett Lake. The property was owned by E. Johnson and M. Watson of Carcross but was bonded to J. Moore Elmer of the Slate Creek Mining Company during the winter of 1921-22. A small amount of prospecting was done on the claims, but the option was abandoned in the spring of 1922.((W. E. Cockfield, “Exploration in South Yukon”, 1922 in H. S. //Bostock, Yukon Territory: Selected Field Reports of the Geological Survey of Canada, 1898 to 1933.// Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1957: 505.)) 

Slate Creek Mining Company lost its financial backers in the mid-1920s, but interest revived in the 1930s. By then, Elmer's elder son Andrew Moore Elmer (b. 1905) had assumed the lead in securing financing. In later years, Elmer's younger son, Lewis, played a prominent role in keeping the operation going.((“Elmer family papers, ca. 1880-1949.” University of Alaska, Fairbanks. 2019 website: https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/data/309442518))