The dredge

Dawson city is famous as a gold mining town and there are old gold dredges and tailings along Bonanza Creek.

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.

The principle of the Dredge is simple  – a continuous chain of buckets scoop gravel out of the river bottom and then  water is used to seperate the heavier gold.

They moved these things along the streams – the remnants of the tailings are still obvious.

 

 

Dredge # 4 is a site of Parks Canada now. It is the largest wood hulled dredge in North America. It cost half a million to build and paid for itself in the first year.

One year it made a million – big money back then.

The dredges, which operated 24 hours a day, were efficient and economical. The operating season averaged 200 days, starting in late April or early May and ending in November.

 

Gold Dredge No. 4, a National Historic Site, is located just outside Dawson City. One of the 2 dozen dredges that worked the Klondike gold fields, today Dredge No. 4 rests alongside Bonanza Creek on Claim No. 17 (below Discovery claim), where it ceased operations in 1960.

Built in 1912, Dredge No. 4 was the largest wooden hull, bucket-line dredge in North America. It operated from 1913 until 1959 to the Klondike and Bonanza Creek valleys` the heart of the Klondike Gold Rush.

 

 

The buckets weighed over a ton and would scoop up more than that  – there was a continuous line of the them scooping up the gravel.

Dawson City was the second place to have electricity in Canada after Montreal. The Dredge was run by electricity from a hydroelectric plant he built in advance to supply the dredges.

 

# 4 weighed 3,000 tons. It worked its way up pretty small creeks. There was an advance crew that removed the topsoil, and melted down thru the permafrost to the gold bearing gravel. The giant (over a ton each) scoops on a chain brought the gravel up – a 200 hp motor ran that – then it went into a drum that rotated at 8 rpmthen finally into sluices that separated out the gold. The drum took 50 hp.

The dredge arm could be moved about 180 degrees by pivoting the barge on huge points in the creek bed. They moved forward after the excavated in front of them and then winched themselves forward.

It only took 4 people to operate the dredge  but many more on the ground in advance and support crew. The tailings came out a conveyor back to the stern of the boat – and they are still piles of them around all of the local creeks.

 

Rising gold-prices caused a mini-boom in the 1930`s but it didn`t last. 1966 saw the last dredge shut down for good. Gold mining in Dawson City was all but over.