Alaska – Canada Travels 2014, Dredge No. 4 near Dawson City, August 11th.

The No. 4 Dredge.

Before we leave Dawson City we take a tour of Drudge No. 4 National Historic Site, the largest wooden-hulled drudge in North America. It was a floating gold-panning factory and an amazing piece of machinery that mined and separated placer gold in a continuous process. The dredge is immense and it was a feat just getting the parts to this remote location to be assembled.

The basic concept of the dredge.

Information panels explain the operations.

You can only go into the dredge on a guided tour which is interesting and amazing. I can't explain like our guide did precisely what all of these various parts and giant gears do so just enjoy the photos from the interior of the dredge. Big gears and machines are works of ingenuity and, after their fashion, works of art.

Some of the gears that operated the dredge.

 

Our guide explains how the dredging works.

 

Our guide explains the control room operation where the foreman commanded the operation.

The foreman looked out this window as the dredge was operating and watched the bucket chain scoop the gold bearing gravel into the dredge.

The buckets in the bucket chain that scooped the gravel sit along the path and have become planters for wild flowers.

A single bucket from the bucket chain.

The trammel that separates the gravel from the placer gold. 

The shakers that act as gold pans and separates the gold from the fine gravel at the end of the process.

The conveyer that sends the processed gravel out the back of the dredge and created the gravel piles that fill in the stream bed as the dredge moves forward up the river.

The dredge created sweeping gravel piles that accumulated behind the dredge. These have re-vegetated and are once again home to wildlife.

The back end of the dredge and the conveyer that dumps gravel back into the river bed.

Gold mining operations ended here in the 1950’s.

Next we had south again to Whitehorse in the Yukon.

See you down the road.

Jackie