1/2/2024 0 Comments Gold dredge![]() Update: The tour operation opened as the "Klondike Gold Dredge" but is now (2019) Alaska 360 Dredge Town. Coordinating tours with the railway could have benefits for everybody concerned. Another possible benefit of the location across from the railway shops is the opportunity to increase awareness of the value of industrial artifacts in understanding our history. However, for a commercial tour operator, the location provides access to large numbers of people (particularly those on the cruise ships), and with proper design of the dredge's surroundings and the tours through it, will be able to provide a good introduction to the gold mining history of the Yukon and Alaska. The reason was simple - there was no gold there. Historic purists will note that there were never any dredges on the Skagway River. The digging ladder is to the right, and the spud, which is dropped as anĪnchor to hold the dredge in position as it digs, is sticking up at left centre. The Sixtymile Dredge as it was being disassembled, September 11, 1999. Although the first truckload arrived in Skagway yesterday, it will be a while before any but the most experienced eye will recognize the various chunks of steel as a gold dredge! It will be located on the banks of the Skagway River, right across from the huge shops of the White Pass & Yukon Route railway. The new home for the Sixtymile Dredge will be Skagway, Alaska, where it will be rebuilt as a private interpretive centre. He was taken to Dawson by truck, to the airport by ambulance, and then by medevac aircraft to Whitehorse and later Vancouver.Įach morning that I was there, work on the high sections of the dredge had to be delayed until the frost had melted and the water evaporated from the steel. On September 9th, one of the crew members fell off a steel beam, badly breaking his ankle. Taking apart a 60-year old dredge is certainly not a job for amateurs even men experienced in this sort of work can run into trouble. The gold values for the most part were not high enough to be profitable, and in 1954, with only 1,528 ounces of gold recovered that season, the dredge was shut down for the last time. The property and dredge were taken over by the Yukon Placer Mining Company, and they operated until 1954 with uneven sucess. This was Yukon Exploration's last year of operations, however, as they declared bankruptcy that winter. ![]() Ingenuity is an important trait for mine managers to possess - in 1948, when a shortage of bulldozer parts caused a delay in stripping the overburden from the gold-bearing gravel, the creek was dammed to divert the flow of water and wash away the muck. During the 2 days I spent at the dredge camp last week, I had the pleasure of spending an evening with Jimmy, talking about his life mining on Glacier and Big Gold, starting in 1937. Among them was Jimmy Lynch, who now, 52 years later, still lives on the property (which he now owns) beside the dredge. Yukon Explorations held a total of 133 placer claims, and 62 miles of prospecting leases in the district, and on August 31, 1947, the dredge starting working ground that had been thawed by a crew of about 30 men. The dredge, built by Washington Iron Works, has 70 buckets, each 3½ cubic feet, on an endless chain. The following year, they rebuilt it near the confluence of Glacier and Big Gold Creeks, in the Sixtymile district about 50 miles west of Dawson. brought this diesel-powered bucket-line dredge to the Yukon from Oregon, where it had apparently been working. For one gold dredge on Big Gold Creek, though, 1999 marks not the end, but a new beginning. Slowly but surely, the pans, shovels, cabins and even huge pieces of mechanized equipment are disappearing, either into the hands of private collectors, or succumbing to old age. Scattered through the gold fields of the North are an astounding number of artifacts that could help tell of both the hardships and the pleasures of mining for gold in the wilderness. The Sixtymile Gold Dredge, Yukon & Alaska
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