Placer mining began near Fairbanks in July 1902, after Felix Pedro (real name Felice Pedroni), an Italian immigrant and Tom Gilmore discovered gold in the hills north of the Tanana and Chena Rivers in 1901.

This was one of the richest claims in the Fairbanks Mining District and paid as high as $136 to the pan (gold @ $20/ounce).

Gold occurs in a Cretaceous porphyritic granodiorite pluton as finely-distributed particles in and on the edges of small quartz veinlets and swarms.

A heap-leaching component is being added to the original carbon-in-pulp vat leaching gold-recovery process.

The True North mine is a recently developed, and now suspended, open pit operation that delivered its ore to the mill at Fort Knox.