Archives West Finding Aid

George Watkin Evans was born in Abercarne, South Wales, in 1876, and came to the United States with his parents as a young boy. His father was a coal miner, and the family lived in Pennsylvania before coming west to the Washington coal fields. Beginning at the age of eleven, Evans spent his youth working in coal mines. Having no formal education, he taught himself to read the Welsh Bible and studied in the evenings, taking a correspondence course in preparation for college.

At the age of 20, Evans entered the Mining Engineering Department at the State College of Washington in Pullman. While in college, he took a year off and went to Dawson in the Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush. He took a job on El Dorado Creek, one of the richest placer creeks of the time, hoisting gravel out of a mine shaft. This work was his introduction to gold mining.

Returning to college, he earned his degree in Mining and Engineering and found employment in Colorado at the Dorcas Cyanide Mill. Working every department in the mill, he then moved on to take charge of a cyanide mill in Silver Cliff, Colorado. While his days were spent working, his evenings were spent studying the metallurgy of gold and silver. When Evans was poisoned by cyanogen gas and was forced to leave the metallurgy profession, he returned to coal mining.

Evans spent the next several years as a consulting mining engineer conducting coal surveys for the U.S. Bureau of Mines, the United States Navy, and the Northern Pacific Railroad. He was an authority in his field, recognized in engineering circles in North America and England.

Later in his life, Evans returned to his interest in gold mining and did professional consulting work in the gold fields of Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and parts of Alaska.