Alaska DNR – RST 1932 Realignment of Little Eldorado Creek Road

Fairbanks Gold Mining, Inc. (FGMI), requested Frontier Surveys to administratively realign various spurs of Little Eldorado Creek Road, an RS 2477 right-of-way documented in the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Historic Trails Database as RST 1932. Relevant Alaska Statute is AAC 51.065(k). The realignment took place entirely on State of Alaska lands. 

On December 20, 2000, DNR-DMLW issued a decision under ADL 416509 to issue a mill site lease to FGMI. The lease authorized relocation of RST 1932. On February 28, 2020, DNR-Northern Region issued a “Regional Manager’s Decision”, setting forth the formal regulatory process for RST 1932 relocation. 

This Survey Plan was comprised of three tasks: 1) Research, 2) Field As-built Execution, and 3) Document/drafting preparation of Record of Survey (ROS) and subsequent recording. 

The Survey Instructions issued Planning Documents to assist in documenting Federal, State and private interests within the project boundary. AK Mapper, BLM Mapper, FNSB land use web portals were utilized, in addition to physical research of historic aerial photography/microfiche if required. Project documents issued by DNR listed 25 affected ADL’s by the reroute of RST 1932. All research discovered as part of Realignment of RST 1932 was submitted to DNR-DMLW as part of the “Preliminary Submittal/Review” meeting. 

The Survey Instructions had very detailed criteria for execution of the As-built Survey, and is broken into two tasks: Section line monumentation recovery/Establishment of monumentation and; As-built of existing realignment structures/roads to create the new right-of-way alignments for the final ROS. 

The third mission was the drafting & final plat preparation of the newly identified road easements. Frontier also worked with all affected ADL Mining Claim owners to draft easement documents showing where the newly aligned RST 1932 easement crossed their claims.