Commercial tours stopped as of Jan. 1, part of a corporate decision to refocus community outreach programs more towards local residents, according to spokeswoman Lorna Shaw.

"The people we want to educate are the people who live here," she said.

But instead, many of the 3,600 paying guests visiting Fort Knox during the two seasons of commercial tours were visitors from Outside, Shaw said. "We don't want to exclude visitors to Alaska, but our primary focus is the folks in Alaska."

In fact, the thousands of educational visitors passing through the gold mine sparked the origins of a commercial tour concept at Fort Knox.

"We were doing so many educational tours and parents heard about it and wanted to see for themselves," Shaw said. "We were inundated with people interested in tours and we did not have the capacity to be able to cover those costs."

That's because a tour of Fort Knox is labor-intensive. The two-hour plus visit requires safety gear for each guest, including hard hats, safety glasses and ear protection. Guests watch a video in the administration building, then load up in a van for a driving tour of the mine.

Stops include an overlook of the massive pit, a view of the rock crusher and a trip through the mill complex, where large SAG and ball mills grind the gold rich rock into a near-pulverized state.

The finale includes Polaroid photos of each guest holding a startlingly heavy brick of gold with a variable value, depending on current market prices, that usually approaches $100,000.

Commercial tours, charging $21 per person, started in 2002. Revenue covered the mine's costs to hire additional tour guides and pay for advertising, Shaw said. "It was not designed to be profit generating."

Fort Knox operators advertised the tour in major Alaska tourism publications, including the Milepost, the Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Bureau annual guide, the local newspaper's visitor guide and with publication and distribution of colorful rack cards.

"We got great returns (on advertising)," Shaw said. "It was an amazing response. We were not able to accommodate everyone who requested tours."

Part of the interest is that few operating gold mines in the United States are open for public tours, Shaw said. The few that are don't provide such an in-depth, educational view of the process.

"We represent mining very well. Most people leave with a favorable impression," she said.

As is the case in Fairbanks, mining tourist attractions are more typically based on historical operations, such as panning, dredging or placer mining.

"I'm disappointed that they chose to discontinue, because it was a good tour," said Johne Binkley, who heads up two major tourism attractions in Fairbanks, Riverboat Discovery and El Dorado Gold Mine.

"Gold mining is so much of our mainstay ... important to Fairbanks today as it was 100 years ago."

His mining attraction features an operating placer mine, a short train trip through a permafrost tunnel and an opportunity to pan for gold. "We focus more on the history of mining ... sort of missionaries of responsible mining."

Fort Knox's attraction offered more of a present-day, industrial experience that's relatively rare, he added.

"There's not a lot of hardrock mines out there that a person can take a tour of," he said. "It really is a great opportunity to see in real life what gold mining is all about."

Curiosity about gold mining initiated some of the mine's visitors, said Deb Hickok, executive director of the Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Bureau. "People I know who took the tour were amazed at the size of the vehicles and being able to hold a big piece of gold. They were pretty impressed."

The mine's distance from town, about 25 miles, was one deterrent for visitors, she said. "It takes a few years to generate the volume."

She, too, is disappointed about the change in policy at Fort Knox. "We lost a good new product to sell. It's good to be able to add variety in your products ... their focus is really gold mining. The tourism was just a part on top."

Rather than bring its neighbors to the mine, Fort Knox will increase efforts to take the mine to its neighboring community, Shaw said, such as making mining presentations to school groups off-site. The company is also planning to conduct a public perception survey in the Fairbanks area.