Winston Carew

Winston Carew.

Winston Carew was a Mexican mining engineer employed by Kramer Associates in the 1890s. Carew headed one of several prospecting parties sent by K.A. President Diego Cortez y Catalán into the Yukon region of Russian Alaska in the spring of 1895 to search for copper. Although none of the prospecting teams located any copper-bearing ore, in July 1896 Carew's team struck a vein of gold. After spending several months mapping out the gold fields, Carew reported back to Cortez that "the nature and full extent of the fields cannot be determined. But there is no doubt that this is the most important gold discovery in the history of mankind."

When the Russian government reneged on the terms of the mining concession it had granted K.A., Cortez successfully maneuvered behind the scenes to start a war between Russia and Mexico. By the end of the summer of 1898 the Mexican Army had conquered the gold fields, and by the spring of 1899 work in the fields bore out Carew's predictions.