thorough knowledge of the coast has been obtained the difficulties of securing suitable harbors will not be insurmountable.
The Copper River and Northwestern Railway Company, which has a railroad running northward into the interior from the splendid harbor of Cordova, has surveyed a branch line from this road to Katalla and thence to the coal field. The distance from the coal field to Cordova by this route is about 90 miles. Another route has been surveyed from the main line to the coal field by way of Charlotte Lake. By this route the distance to Cordova is only about 60 miles.
The area within which coal has been found extends in a southwest northeast direction from Bering Lake to beyond Slope glacier, a distance of more than twenty miles. The width of the known coal formation is, in the northeastern part of the area, more than five miles, but the average of the field is considerably less.
The chief areas applied for in this field include the following: Controller Bay group, Pittsburgh group, Youngstown group, Cleveland group, Rathbone and Aurora groups. Pacific Coal and Oil Company group or English Company group, Cunningham group, Chezum group, Wardell group, Hartline group, Alaska Petroleum and Coal Company group, Willoughby group, the claims of the Portland Alaska
