Gold Dredge #4

After Lunch we drove out to Gold Dredge #4 that was abandoned in the 1950's. It looks like a large steam boat in some ways.

They had a nice diagram that was numbered with a description of what all of the parts did.

This dredge had to be built on site with each part being shipped up the Klondike River then over landed to its location. If you look at the parts you can see that this was not an easy job.

Here are just some of the gears. They were over 6' in diameter.

The dirt that was brought up was sifted through various screens with different sized holes.

Here are some more parts.

This is a view from inside looking down to where the dirt (and hopefully gold) was drug and brought up to be processed.

These boxes moved from side to side as water washed over the rocks. Each box had different sized stops in it.

The final step was a burlap type material that caught the gold dust.

This was the tour leader who explained everything. You can get a better idea of the size of the machinery in comparison.

After the tour was over we headed back to Bonanza Creek and panned for some more gold. Wayne is the third person from the left.

Later that night Chuck, Bear, and I went back to Bonanza Creek to get a bucket of dirt to pan later.