It is gold that draws them still. I met Bill Dunlevy, head of the Anchorage chapter of the Gold Prospectors' Association of America, a few weeks previously, at the miners’ weekly breakfast at Denny's. He had the tough, lined face of someone who had stared down many years of weather, and around his neck hung the five-ounce nugget that he found in 1992.

He was looking forward to their annual outing to Chicken, 400 miles away. “People do well out of it,” he said. “In one week last year one of our members got two ounces. Damn near pays for the trip. The women sit and gossip on the deck all day and tan. At night we have a potluck, get crazy, tell lies.” He invited me to come.

Chicken is little more than three identical buildings that function as bar, café and gift shop, all selling T-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers that say: “I got laid in Chicken.” Out along the creek was gold-panning of all kinds, from lone men with metal detectors, to husband-and-wife teams panning in the sunshine, to huge dredging operations with bulldozers and ATVs and growing banks of pilings.

Yet Dunlevy, when I found him there, was in low spirits. It was the hottest summer since records began and the creek was so low it was nearly dry. He and the other prospectors had dug pools and were panning out of them, but most people had found next to nothing. One man showed me a small vial of the three-quarters of an ounce he had amassed in a week-and-a-half. At roughly $1,200 an ounce, this was still better than Alaska's minimum wage.

Born in Pennsylvania, Dunlevy joined the Air Force, and it was on a posting in California that a sergeant first took him out to pan. “The first day,” Dunlevy says, “the first tiny speck, I was hooked.” For five years, every weekend, in all weathers, Dunlevy was out in the creeks, doing 10- to 14-hour days. “These was the days when all they had was the 16-inch steel pans. You had to get them rough in the fire. Now they got the plastic molds with the riffles on the bottom. But the principle's the same. I don't care if you're using bulldozers or sluice boxes. The most important thing is to learn how to pan.”

He moved to Alaska in 1974, and now has 12 claims. The nugget around his neck he found in Turnagain Pass, just outside of Anchorage. He works that claim in a drysuit, diving underwater to reach the creekbed. Because of the current's strength, the water doesn't freeze until its temperature drops below 18 degrees, at which point panning becomes impossible. “We'll be sitting in the tent, watching the thermometer with the heater on. As soon as it gets to 18 we get in. You gotta pan quick 'cause the water freezes in the pan. The water gets in and runs up your arm like a knife. By the end of the day you're numb to the knees. The first day's okay 'cause everything is dry. Second morning you gotta get into that frozen underwear, frozen socks, try and warm them up. It's tough. But when we found that nugget, it was like a brand new day. We was warm as toast.” His eyes shone. “Gold mining is mostly luck. That and choosing a good placing.”