Most people believe that gold mining in the Yukon and Alaska was
primarily done with gold pans, or possibly sluice boxes. In fact, those methods were only used
for testing streams, and in the early stages of mining in some areas such as the Klondike.
Relatively little gold was recovered, and it wasn't until the arrival of huge dredges that
gold production soared.
With buckets that gouged out several cubic yards of gravel on each pass,
enormous amounts of material could be processed by a dredge, so even fairly poor ground could be
profitably mined.
The bucket-line dredges that changed the character of gold mining in
Alaska and the Yukon were invented in New Zealand. Many changes and additions were made to
make them suitable for working frozen ground, but the technology changed little for the 80 years
they were in use. Although they look complex, the basic concept is very simple - the buckets
scoop up the gravel and dump it into sluice boxes inside the dredge, water is pumped in to
separate the gold from the gravel, and the worthless gravel is then dumped out the back.
Preserving machinery the size of a gold dredge can present enormous
technical problems. In 1996, Dredge No. 4, which is owned by Parks Canada, was found to have
structural damage which required extensive emergency repairs to save the gantry structure. There
is a comprehensive paper on-line describing the process (see the Links page).
Several private attempts are being made in Alaska to develop
tourist-based operations with a gold dredge as the centrepiece. One such dredge, the Sixtymile
Dredge, was moved in September 1999 from the Sixtymile gold district near Dawson to Skagway.
Dredge #8 is also open for tours in Fairbanks, and the Pedro Dredge in Chicken is being readied
for access.
The use of huge dredges such as the ones in the Klondike and at Nome
is limited to Siberia now. In North America, it may well be impossible today to get an
environmental clearance to conduct such large-scale stripping of valleys. The Walter Johnson
Dredge, which operated on Clear Creek in the central Yukon in 1981, did some reclamation of the
tailings area. Visitors, however, often make negative comments about the huge barren tailings
piles along the Klondike Highway south of Dawson City.
Most modern dredges are much smaller, and use suction to bring up the
gold-bearing gravel from river bottoms. Many are used by "recreational" miners due to their
relatively low cost and ease of use.
The largest and most famous of the dredges were manufactured by
Yuba or Marion, but many other companies built dredges of various sizes.
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