Day 9 -- The Dredge

June 27, 2014

It had felt like forever since the sunshine had warmed our faces.  The sunshine, while lifting our spirits some, still did not solve our situation.  We were still stuck in Canada.  We re-filled our gas tank for 1.54/liter before we did any sightseeing in this tiny Yukon town.

We drove up Dome Rd. again.  This time we could see all the mountain ranges on the other side of the river. 

The attractions of Dawson City all charge admissions.  It is very difficult to decide what is worth admission prices.  There was Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall that performed a show in the evenings for ten dollars a person.  There was a museum.  There was the cabin of Robert Service.  There was a replica of Jack London’s cabin.  There was the S.S. Keno.

We decided to risk a trip down Bonanza Rd. to see Dredge No. 4.  For fifteen dollars a person, we could tour the world’s largest wood-hulled dredge.   We traveled slowly, with our tire situation, up the gravel road looking at the piles of tailings.  There were still several private claims, machinery hard at work.  There were many, many piles of tailings, obviously having been went through more than once.  The waters of Bonanza was a nasty tea color, the left over colors of mining. 

We passed Fox Gulch.  In the early days of gold mining, in Bonanza Creek and in the Klondike River, water was a limited resource.   Here, in 1909, the Yukon Gold Company created a system of flumes and trenches providing gravity-fed water over 70 miles to the mining operations in the Klondike Valley, and to the new hydroelectric power plant, built on the North Fork of the Klondike River.  The power plant brought electricity to power the dredges, as well as to the citizens of Dawson City. 

  

We arrived in front of the massive dredge, two thirds the length of a football field and eight stories tall, where it currently sits on claim seventeen.  We parked the car and purchased our tickets for the tour. We stared at the massive machine until our tour guide led us across the plank into the side of the vessel. 

Everything inside the dredge was covered with dust.

 In 1905, the first dredge began mining a concession of 40 square miles given to Joe Boyle and the Canadian Klondike Co. in 1900.  Built in 1912 for the Canadian Klondike Mining Co. and designed by Marion Steam Shovel Co., Dredge No. 4 had originally been manufactured to mine the Klondike River Valley, and did so, until 1940, when it was dismantled and relocated to Bonanza Creek. 

It operated in Bonanza Creek until 1959, when a hole in the front hull caused the dredge to sink into several feet of mud and disrepair.  Wages were going up, while the price of gold was not.  The company salvaged the most expensive parts of the machinery, but left the giant beast in the muck of Bonanza Creek

The dredge resided in the muck until June 11, 1992 when the park service began to restore this piece of history.  

The dredge was filled with massive gears.  During construction, the gears failed to arrive by train, being too massive to make the journey through a tunnel.  Construction was halted as they waited for the gears to arrive by ship.  

This massive machine was designed to operate with just four employees. 

The spud would be lowered to act as a pivot point.  To maneuver the dredge within the pond, cables were attached to logs buried in the hillsides, and controlled by a winching system.  

The entire dredge had been powered by electricity, provided by the hydroelectric plant.  Most of the wiring had been salvaged or stolen.  

On the bow, the bucket line deposited gold bearing gravel into the hopper.

The gravel moved from the hopper to the trommel. The trommel was a revolving metal tube-like screen. 

The waste gravel moved along a stacker belt into scalloped patterned tailing piles out the stern.  

Water sprayed off the gravel in the trommel, as the gold settled in the sluice boxes. The miners used netting made of coconut to trap the gold.  At the end of the season, they would burn the mats in an effort to remove any leftover trapped gold.  

The wear on the bucket pin (below) was only one season's worth of use.  Oil could not be used on any part that touched the water, or the gold could float away

After our tour was over, we did not risk the gravel road up to the Discovery Claim, and instead, headed back into Dawson City. 

We drove across the ferry, even if we were only going across for a few miles to only return back to the city.  Fish wheels stood on the opposing banks of the Yukon River.  Moosehide slide, the evidence of a long-ago landslide, sits above the town, easily mistaken as evidence of more mining. 

Catrina spent the evening washing up dirty clothes, in anticipation of our expected freedom the next day.

Then, there was dinner. And then, there was sleep.