The Saltwater Pumphouse on Sandy Beach

The Saltwater Pumphouse on Sandy Beach, Douglas Island, Alaska

I came upon it unexpectedly on a beach, inexplicably drawn to it. A dilapidated weathered building rising up out of the water, perhaps twenty feet tall. A few patches of a red roof remained, the rafters exposed in a patchwork pattern.. Grayish-tan-yellowish-brown sides of pockmarked stone? Concrete? The stone was weathered away two thirds of the way down to the water, revealing a rusting steel structure. Near the top, two dark empty windows gaped at me. A rusty metal ladder maybe eight feet tall, leaned against one side, just reaching the edge of the worn away stone. Above the ladder was an opening for a large pipe, rust stains surrounding it. Above that was a door, leading nowhere.

I realized that the height where layers of stone had been worn away revealed the work of tides eating away at the building over decades. At low tide I could walk almost right up to it without getting my feet wet. On other days, at high tide, the building’s feet were in the water, actually its entire steel legs. A line of weathered deteriorating wooden posts, decorated by white barnacles, emerged from the sand, pointing towards the building. Their jagged tops were black against the sky.

Who knew there were so many shades of gray and brown? Debris, but not trash, dotted the beach. Curious rusty metal pieces, some large, some small. A few shells. Yellow-green algae grew on the rocks. Unfamiliar olive-green ribbons of plant matter, some with bulbous ends, like green onions, only bigger: bull kelp, I later learned. Driftwood, bleached white: small decaying logs and giant trees. Mats of yellow-brown-greenish leafy seaweed and rocks clustered on the sand nearest the tower. There was a certain smell of decay, of dampness, of salt air on the beach. I encountered a clean and perfectly preserved fish skeleton, its white vertebrae with ribs intact, curved attractively on the darker sand, with only its head missing. Less appealing was the remains of a partially eaten fish. I could hear the sharp cries of eagles, or were they ravens?

What struck me most of all were slivers of broken pottery, bleached white. I began to collect them: a part of a rim revealed one as a saucer; a rounded side, a cup, or a remnant of a bowl. Some had a fragment of a maker’s stamp: Johnson’s China, London. Had diners on cruise ships carelessly tossed their dishes overboard into the waves, rather than washing them? Were fishes below making dishes? The mystery of the dishes intrigued me, and that of the building.

“My little building,” as I came to think of it, stood on Sandy Beach, on Douglas Island, partially in the water of the Gastineau Channel. You could look across to Juneau, Alaska’s capital city, nestled at the foot of a great green muscular mountain, which rose almost straight up behind the city. Even in spring, patches of snow, called “termination dust” by the locals, topped the mountains highest reaches.

When I first walked out on the beach, the white sand was squishy & uneven beneath my feet. As I got closer to the water, it became hard and smooth and darker and wet – low tide. Tides were new to me. My hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, is located on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, which has no tides. This was the farthest I’d ever been from Memphis: 3,403 miles, by car. And yet, I felt at home here, like I’d come home at last.

Here I learned to check the tide tables before I took a walk on the beach. At low tide, I could walk out almost to the tower without getting my feet wet. At high tide, the beach’s width shrank considerably.

Looking down the channel, I spied pale bluish misty mountains, going on forever. On misty days they merged with the slate gray sky like a watercolor. The sky was different each day here, each hour of each day. Some days, fog obscured the green mountains. Some days, the wind whipped my hooded raincoat around me. On sunlit mornings, I could almost see individual trees on the mountains, and I could see them when I used my binoculars. Magnified, I could see that the wavy white vertical stripe on the mountain was actually a tumbling waterfall. Peering at the building, I could see details of its surface.

How old was this building? Worn and eroded by the weather but still standing. And why was it here? What was its purpose?

Beyond the seagrass that bordered the beach, was a forested area. It provided clues. Amidst the tangle of undergrowth were several stone buildings, in varying shapes of decay. What was the place? What had happened here? A trip to the Juneau City Museum finally revealed the answer.

Douglas Island had been the home of the Treadwell Hard Rock Gold Mine, once the largest gold mine of its kind in the world. The buildings had been a part of the mine. “My little building” was a Saltwater Pumping Station, providing water to cool the machinery. It had been built out on a tall pier, hence the high windows and door to nowhere, and the decaying posts leading out to it. In 1917, there was a sudden and terrible cave-in, destroying the mine. The mining company had literally “undermined” the rocks on which the mine was built, making the ground unstable. Water rushed in and flooded the entire mine.

I found a postcard at the museum that showed hundreds of miners in their mess hall. They were eating from heavy white china dishes, like the ones I’d found on the beach. The mess hall had also been built out on a pier. After over a hundred years, the shards were still washing up on shore.

After the cave-in, the whole place began to return to the earth – it is still in the process of decaying. But we can learn about the gold mine that was there from its remnants, from photos, from historical documents.

Now, townspeople and tourists visit, but not as many tourists as the thousands that descend on Juneau each year on cruise ships, as it’s off the beaten path of the tour groups, not like the receding Mendenhall Glacier, not a site where whale watching cruises go, and it doesn’t have souvenir shops. Although, tour guides are making inroads. One company has virtual tours of the old mining site in the woods – do they include the pumphouse?

But I still regard it as my private place, to which I’m inextricably drawn.

In another hundred years, there may be only fragments left, if anything, to remind us what was once there. Perhaps the land will return to its native inhabitants.