Emma Grace Lowe
January 12, 1903 to May 10, 1990
Grace Lowe on March 26th, 1939
Source: Seattle Sunday Times
Emma Grace Lowe has the distinction of being on of the very few women that fully operated a profitable gold mine in Alaska in the Tolovana Mining District and later a less profitable operation in the Rampart District. She was fiercely independent and had an aggressive reputation when crossed, but she was a quick learner with a strong work ethic that led to a successful stint in her mining career.
Emma or Grace as she was known, was born January 12, 1903 in Seattle, Washington to Vallentine V. and Bonnie G. Lowe. Her father was an upholsterer who worked in a furniture shop. Their children were Helen, Edwin, Grace and Roy. By 1923 Grace was working as a clerk in the King County auditor’s office in Seattle and she had attended two years of college. It was not long before she decided to come to Alaska, showing up in the Fairbanks newspapers in the spring of 1926.
Grace had become part owner of the Black Rapids Roadhouse along the Richardson Highway. Before the summer was out, she had married Ira Warren Morgridge in Fairbanks on July 15, 1926. By fall the marriage had failed, as indicated in an October 1926 Seward hotel listing showing Ira staying at the Van Gilder and Grace staying at the Sexton on the same day. Ira ended up moving back to Cordova. It was at that time that Grace’s lifelong best friend, Evelyn Greenway shows up as part owner of the roadhouse.
Grace spent summers at the roadhouse and winters in Fairbanks working and playing on the women’s city basketball team. She was an aggressive player and assisted her team to rack up many victories during the dark cold months of winter. Usually by March each year, Grace would leave Alaska for a visit to Washington or Oregon to see friends and family, returning within a couple of months in time for breakup and all that summer had to offer.
1927-1928 Women’s Fairbanks City Champions; Grace Lowe, Audrey Stanfield (Loftus), Florence Roth, Evelyn Greenway, Albina Miller, Grace Clark
Credit: Alaska & Polar Regions Archives, UAF
It was in the late 1920’s that Grace and her friend Evelyn set their sights on the mining camp of Livengood, Alaska located within the Tolovana Mining District. They were spending a lot of time there, and Evelyn ended up marrying San Godfrey in Seattle in 1932.
In the mid and late twenties Grace was working on getting mining ground and began staking claims. Apparently her brother Roy was also in the Livengood district for a few years because he shows up on many of the documents filed by Grace. These mining claim and related legal documents range in years from 1925 to 1950, and show Grace was active in prospecting, staking and often working claims in the Livengood district during those years. Grace and Evelyn still owned the Rapids Roadhouse and Grace would go down there to check on it from time to time. In late May of 1932 she made history when she rode a motorcycle from Fairbanks to the Rapids Roadhouse using the ferries to cross the major river crossings.
A few months later Grace was earning a living in Fairbanks running the Igloo barbershop. Apparently, the barber trade was not to her liking, because she only did that job for a few months. She then set her sights back on Livengood.
In 1934 Grace joined up with Ben Dahl to mine with Chuck Douglas in Douglas’s operation on Gertrude Creek in Livengood. According to newspaper reports, she was part owner with Luther Hess on five claims on that creek. One year later in 1935, Dahl and Douglas are out of the picture, and she is listed as mining with Andy Warwick with an open cut operation, and the following season they were major players in the Livengood mining scene.
Excerpt from Fairbanks Daily News-Miner October 8, 1936:
MINING IS NOT MONOPOLY MEN IS PROVEN
“The old belief that mining is strictly a man’s game has been rudely shattered by the experience of Miss Grace Lowe of Fairbanks and Livengood. Always a lover of the outdoors, Miss Lowe became interested in mining a few years ago and now she has in partnership with Andy Warwick, a full-fledged placer mining operation on Gertrude Creek, two miles from Livengood. Miss Lowe’s interest in mining is active. She works in the cut and knows as much about the paystreak, bedrock formation and best way to handle dirt as any veteran. Proof of the pudding is that the mine is a going proposition. Gertrude Creek, in common with other streams in the Livengood district, is oftentimes short of water and to help out, Miss Lowe and Mr. Warwick bought a caterpillar tractor during the summer. Miss Lowe drove it from Fairbanks to Livengood and frequently operates it at the mine. It has been found to be of great assistance. “
Grace Lowe and Frank Bowers in Livengood, with fox pups. Circa 1936.
Credit: Tim Robinson
Grace was making money and in one 1938 article it said she had made $40,000 in one season. That was a lot of money in those days, and it showed in the aviation reports of the newspaper. Grace was commuting by plane between Fairbanks and Livengood much more often than before. Another indicator of her success was that in May 1937 she paid the territorial gold tax, and since she made an overpayment, the territorial legislature awarded her a refund on the excess in the amount $147.82.
In the summer of 1938 Grace’s mining partner Andy Warwick, entered into another partnership with Luther Hess, for a mining operation on Wilbur Creek, also in the Tolovana Mining District. They purchased two new dozers and commenced work. Grace was still running the mining operation on Gertrude Creek. She and Andy were still business partners.
That winter, Grace did take her annual trip to the lower 48 to see friends and family in Oregon and California. While down there she was featured in a couple of magazine and newspaper articles about the novelty of being a female gold miner. One of these articles even had a big photo image of her.
Grace returned to Alaska, was back in Livengood for the 1939 season and had purchased a brand new 471 pumping unit from Wells Alaska Motors. Right after the new pump was installed, Luther Hess filed a lawsuit against Grace over the five claims they jointly owned on Gertrude creek in Livengood. They were the same claims that Grace had been actively mining on for the past several years.
According to the newspaper reports, the five claims were owned jointly by Hess and Lowe with Hess having the controlling share. Luther wanted the claims to be partitioned giving Grace her ¼ share, but it was deemed that due to the spotty nature of the paystreak and lack of water, the court deemed there was no way an equitable partition of the ground could be done. Judge Pratt ordered the ground to be sold and Grace would get a forced buyout of her interest in those claims she had been successfully mining. This ended Grace’s operations on Gertrude Creek.
Grace felt betrayed and lashed out at Andy Warwick, her former mining partner. As an act of revenge in 1940 she filed a $100,000 lawsuit against Warwick for breach of matrimonial promise, and the case was dismissed by the court. Grace lost again.
During the 1940’s Grace began filing claims and owned a few on Amy Creek including Discovery Claim. She also had holdings along Livengood Creek and Livengood Bench. Many of these were staked with her brother Roy Lowe. For the next ten years the claim records show her staking activities in these areas.
In November 1940 Grace lost a lawsuit over water rights on Amy Creek in the Livengood District that was brought against her by Andy Warwick’s brother-in-law Max Miller, and Howard Sparks. Once again, she is shut out from mining, but according to later records it looks like she managed to secure water rights again. She did her assessment work and did some mining on Amy Creek during the 1940’s, but did not meet with the successes she had in her previous operations on Gertrude Creek.
She tried to get ground on Fish Creek in the Fairbanks District, but was sued for claim jumping by the United States Smelting & Refining Co. She lost that case as well as further bruising her reputation as a sore loser. In 1941 She met with Ruth Gruber who was a government agent sent to Fairbanks. Ruth later wrote about meeting Grace in her memoir “Inside Of Time, My Journey From Alaska to Israel.” In that book she describes their meeting:
“Women in Fairbanks were doing everything, from owning and running businesses and shops to serving as judges and community leaders. I even met a woman miner, whose name was Grace Lowe. “She’s the boss of her mine at Livengood,” a man told me, “and believe me, she’s the boss all right. She can run the Cat (bulldozer) and the truck. She can cook and do most everything. She came up here in the middle twenties and ran a roadhouse with another woman. Then in the thirties she got her mine and ran it with some helpers. She’s made a lot of money and has properties Outside, too. She’s a real character—intelligent, easy to look at, and has the respect of a lot of us men in town.” Grace Lowe lived up to her reputation. She was wearing a red sweater and blue denim slacks the day I met her, and she looked like Rosie the Riveter, tough and glamorous at the same time. “It’s hard on some women up here,” she told me. “But I get along fine. It’s just as hard on the sourdoughs. Take this week—it’s been eighty degrees each day, and half of them nearly keeled over from heat prostration.”
Several years later, Grace went to the mining camp of Eureka in the Rampart district, and tried to get back into mining but was never nearly as successful as she had been in Livengood. The financial stress of all that litigation and the frustration of the losses brought out the worst in Grace. She took to drinking heavily and became combative and embittered as she aged.
She sued anyone who got in her way and often lost those battles which further fueled her bitterness. One famous foe was attorney Ted Stevens whom she sued several times in an ongoing dispute over a petty charge of mail fraud that involved Grace refusing to return a lid to a cooking pot. At that time Ted Stevens was the Federal District Attorney here in Fairbanks and Grace went after him with her full fury, much to the dismay of Stevens, later to become a powerful U.S. Senator for Alaska for decades.
In her later years Grace spent more and more time at her home on Rabbit Island in Fairbanks or in California with friends and relatives. In 1975, her house was located within the right of way of the new Steese Expressway that was going to be built. Grace refused the offer from the State for her property, and while she was in the lower 48 recovering from a stroke, the state sent movers in to pack up her belongings and put them in storage. Another loss for Grace.
She lived out her last years in public housing after losing her home and being physically limited due to the effects of the stroke. She was moved to Denali Center at the end of her life and quietly passed away there on May 10, 1990. AMHF Inductee Ernest N. Wolff, who frequently expressed admiration and defended the controversial woman mining pioneer, spoke at here services.
Today the only thing left of Grace Lowe’s mining career beyond court records and newspaper articles is her D8 bulldozer. It is sitting quietly right where she last parked it, so long ago that trees are now growing up through it.
In the Seattle Daily Times published on November 18, 1938, an article appeared about Grace being a female miner in an industry dominated by men. When asked about her life as a miner Grace was quoted as saying:
“It’s a fascinating , nervous life, and something’s bound to go wrong every day. But if you ever get the ‘mining bug,’ you stick with the game—and like it.”
Over the years many stories abound about Grace Lowe and her legendary antics. While she may not have been what some would call “ladylike,” she still made her mark in Alaska’s mining history just the same.
Written by Joan Skilbred, reviewed by Tom Bundtzen
References Used in the Emma Grace Lowe Article
More than sixty newspaper articles were researched by Skilbred in writing the biographic sketch of Grace Lowe. Selected sources are referenced below. Fairbanks Daily News Miner July 15 1926 “Morgridge Lowe Wedding Today” Seward Daily Gateway, October 11, 1926 “At the Hotels” (Morgridge and Lowe in separate hotels) Fairbanks Daily News Miner, December 20, 1927 “Evelyn Greenway and Grace Lowe Boarding Steamer Alameda” Seward Daily Gateway, March 24 1928 “Grace and Evelyn leave Seattle on the SS Yukon headed for Alaska” Fairbanks Daily News Miner April 5th, 1928 “Grace and Evelyn return to Fairbanks after several weeks in the States” Fairbanks Daily News Miner October 13, 1928 “Town Girls Organize Basketball Squad” Fairbanks Daily News Miner September 26, 1929 “Lady’s muskrat coat and orthophonic portable--contact Grace Lowe” Fairbanks Daily News Miner April 24, 1930 “Grace Lowe and Evelyn Greenway left today for Dunbar to go by Trail to Livengood” Fairbanks Daily News Miner May 24, 1932 “Grace Lowe Traveling to Black Rapids by Motorcycle” Fairbanks Daily News Miner July 3, 1935 “News received of activities in Livengood” Fairbanks Daily News Miner October 8, 1936 “Mining is Not Monopoly Men is Proven” Fairbanks Daily News Miner April 15, 1937 “Livengood Humming with Spring Work” Fairbanks Daily News Miner April 16, 1937 “Miss Grace Lowe Hurts Right Eye” Seattle Daily Times published on November 18, 1938 “Mining not a man’s game only” Oakland Tribune October 31 1939 “Woman Mines in Alaska” Seattle Sunday Times March 26, 1939 “Woman Miner Heads Inside--Enroute to her Alaska Gold Mine” Fairbanks Daily News Miner June 28, 1939 “Lowe and Hess Placers to be Sold” Fairbanks Daily News Miner February 24, 1940 “Alaskan Files Suit for $100,000) Daily Alaska Empire (Juneau) May 7th, 1940 “Only Woman Miner in Territory Flies Home from Juneau” Fairbanks Daily News Miner December 10, 1940 “Water Right Case decided by Jurist” “My Journey from Alaska to Israel” by Ruth Gruber undated Fairbanks Daily News Miner October 24, 1942 “Grace Lowe Sued for $8,000” Farthest North Collegian July 7, 1943 “Geographic Tells Story of Railroad—Grace Lowe Sends 1915 Issue to University Library” United States Supreme Court Journal February 13 1950 “No. 489 United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company versus Emma Grace Lowe” Oregon Daily Journal January 20, 1955 “Woman Miner Defends Self in Court, Loses” Fairbanks Daily News Miner April 20, 1956 “Woman Sues Stevens for Blackmail” Fairbanks Daily News Miner May 1, 1956 “Woman has filed many complaints” Fairbanks Daily News Miner July 5, 1963 “Expensive Lesson for Local Loser” Fairbanks Daily News Miner June 10, 1975 “Bulldozers are Stayed in local property fight” Fairbanks Daily News Miner June 12, 1975 “Right of way Battle Stinks” Fairbanks Daily News Miner Alaska Notebook by Alaska Linck August 10, 1979 “Well known mining lady still limping from her stroke” Fairbanks Daily News Miner May 10, 1990 “Emma G. Lowe Services”