Police identified the man who was found deceased near the site of the Treadwell Mine as 56-year-old Washington man Steven Earl Carey, according to a Juneau Police Department news release Thursday.
Police found a Washington driver’s license in the man’s wallet and tracked down his next of kin, police say. Family members told police that Carey had come to Juneau unexpectedly, the release states. Alaska records show that Carey might have lived in Juneau in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the release.
At about 3:45 p.m. Tuesday, a hiker called JPD to report finding a man’s body floating in the water of the glory hole near the site of the former mine on Douglas Island, and JPD and Capital City Fire/Rescue special teams arrived. CCFR special teams spent the next few hours working down the steep terrain and removing the body from the water, according to the release.
JPD Lt. Krag Campbell said via phone Tuesday that the death doesn’t appear to be suspicious due to the lack of any signs of injury or trauma, so there also is no cause of death determined yet. The body will be sent to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Anchorage for an autopsy, police say, and the investigation is ongoing.
A short spur that goes off the main maintenance road by the mine — which was at one point the world’s largest gold mine before its collapse in 1917 — leads up to the area above the glory hole. In the mining world, a glory hole is an unofficial term for a large, open-pit mining excavation.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
