Alex McDonald (prospector) Alex McDonald (prospector) Alexander "Big Alex" McDonald (1859–1909) was a Canadian gold prospector who made (and lost) a fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush, earning himself the title "King of the Klondike". The son of Scottish immigrants, McDonald was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He was an unsuccessful prospector, having tried his luck in the Colorado gold fields, before heading to the gold rush in Juneau, Alaska, in the late 1880s. In 1895 or 1896, he was in the Yukon, employed by the Alaska Commercial Company at Forty-Mile to buy mining properties. Gold was discovered in the region in 1897.
Juneau gold belt fissure fillings of the area are comparable with the California "mother lode" deposits. Most of the gold mines in the Juneau belt occur in the band of black slate which lies between the schists to the northeast and the greenstones to the southwest. "The complex of veins which follow this black slate is described as the main lode system of the Juneau belt." "Parallelism of vein systems and ore deposits with the outcrops of bed-rock formations...is one of the noteworthy characteristics of the district." This results in a "linear distribution of the mines." Most of the gold deposits are found