From November 3-6th, more than 1,000 attendees are in Anchorage at the Alaska Miners Association annual convention and tradeshow. The event includes the largest mining trade show in the state, many great networking events, representatives from all operating mines and potential mining development projects in Alaska and educational short courses and technical sessions.
A Good Neighbor: Dawson Mine Is Small but Significant
James Bradbury, Alaska Business, November 3, 2025
Robert Fithian, co-founder and manager of Sundance Mining Group, eagerly highlights certain details of Dawson Mine, an underground gold and silver producer that’s been operating quietly for eight years near Hollis on Prince of Wales Island. It’s the only mine permitted for year-round mining and milling since Kensington mine began production in 2010, he points out. Its mill uses no chemicals, relying instead on a gravity-only recovery circuit. It’s financially solvent, has no lost-time accidents, and is Prince of Wales Island’s leading private employer.
Fithian doesn’t immediately focus on how much gold and quartz Dawson Mine has yielded or the ins and outs of daily operation. He’s proudest, it seems, of how the mine has gained and maintained the support of the local community.
“If you want to do business in rural Alaska, you need to have respect for the people, their way of life, and the natural resources you’re going to impact,” he says.
A Shining Star
First leased to Wendell Dawson by the Kasaan Mining Company in 1930, Dawson Mine started as a tiny operation. In 1933, Dawson hired two Washingtonians to clean the tailings of his mine; the two workers retrieved about 31 ounces of gold—worth roughly $1,000 at the time—in just ten days.
Fast forward about eighty years to 2014, when Fithian joined Sundance Mining Group and began shopping for properties to mine. He considered more than thirty options across Alaska. He settled on the Dawson property, not only because of a report that indicated a potential resource of 44,000 ounces of gold but because of the advantages of the mine’s location. For starters, Prince of Wales Island had a history of resource extraction. Unique in the Panhandle archipelago, the fourth-largest island in the United States is crisscrossed by nearly 300 miles of roads, so Dawson Mine can be accessed by a paved highway. The site further benefits from temperatures and conditions that allow for year-round work.
“This mine really was the shining star out of the ones I had been looking at,” Fithian says.
AIDEA board commits $50 million toward the Ambler Road Project
Desiree Hagen, KOTZ, November 5, 2025
Alaska’s state-owned economic development and finance corporation is committing another $50 million to the controversial Ambler Road Project. On Oct. 22, the board of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, also known as AIDEA, unanimously voted to make the money available to support the 211-mile project, which would connect the Dalton Highway to an undeveloped, mining region near the Brooks Range.
The Biden administration nearly killed the project in 2024, by denying right-of-way permits for the project through federal land.
AIDEA filed an appeal in June. The Trump administration approved the permits earlier this month. Supporters of the project say that it will bring revenue to the state, hundreds of jobs to the region and boost national security with what AIDEA called “critical minerals” and “a domestic supply of rare earth elements.”
“We now have our right-of-way and all federal permits,” said Randy Ruaro, executive director at AIDEA. “We’re proceeding forward as fast as we can to get some field work done and other geotech work, and look forward to eventually building that project and unlocking resources for Alaskans.”
According to AIDEA’s resolution, the $50 million would be used for “expenses and liabilities, including, but not limited to, payment for permitting, construction, legal costs and other expenses.”