Livingston A. Wernecke (1883 - 1941)
Livingston Wernecke was born in Montana to parents Nancy Jane Finney and Charles Theodore Wernecke. Livingston graduated as a mining engineer from the University of Washington.1) In 1906, Livingston was hired by the Guggenheims to conduct legal surveys of gold-dredging claim on the Alaskan Seward Peninsula, and then he was sent to Nevada to the company’s copper mine. He and Mabel G. Rushton were married in 1907. In 1908, they moved to Cordova where Wernecke worked for four years as one of the chief division engineers on the Copper River & Northwestern Railroad. The final spike was driven at Kennicott in 1911.2)
Wernecke, Mabel, and son Ted moved back to Seattle where Wernecke worked as a private consultant. In 1913/14, Wernecke was hired by the Alaska Treadwell and Alaska Juneau Gold Mining companies. He was chief geologist at the Treadwell Mine Complex for a few years and remained the consulting geologist for Alaska Treadwell Gold Mining Company for the rest of his life.3)
Between 1919 and 1925, Wernecke was in charge of developing the Nixon Forks project in western Alaska and this overlapped with his duties at Keno Hill in the Yukon. In 1919, Wernecke and Fred Bradley looked at Bradley’s Gambler claim on Keno Hill, a mining property on Mount Haldane, and then looked over the bankrupt workings at the Venus Mine near Carcross. In 1921, Bradley sent Wernecke to look at Keno Hill and acquire any worthwhile properties. Louis Bouvette missed giving his Silver King samples to Bradley and Wernecke but Alfred Schellinger recognized their value for the Dawson Yukon Gold Company. Wernecke acquired the Ladue property, next to Guggenheims’ mine, in 1921.4)
Wernecke paid prospectors high prices, but he recovered the price and more in mining the ground. He revived the closed down Keno Hill Ltd. camp and his house had a great view over the camp and across the McQuesten River valley. 5) He set up a safe and efficient camp of sixty men at Keno and travelled between Juneau and San Francisco to get mill equipment. The 100-ton-a-day concentration plant was up and running in January 1925. Wernecke was the first to use track vehicles to haul ore over the snow, and he pioneered aviation in northern mining exploration.6)
Wernecke hired Alfred Kirk Schellinger as assistant engineer when he was still working for Keno Hill Mining. That operation had ceased mining and their remaining properties were purchased by Treadwell Yukon around 1939. Fred Bradley died in 1933 and Treadwell Yukon passed into the hands of his brother who did not like the Keno properties. Treadwell Yukon was bankrupt by 1927 and reorganized as Treadwell Yukon Corporation with only a small budget for exploration. Wernecke was put in charge of other Bradley projects and the family built a house in the San Francisco Bay area.7)