11 Dawson City Pt 2
This is the second part of our story on the Dawson area. The finding of gold on the Discovery Claim was the beginning of the Yukon Gold Rush of 1898. The original mining was done by gold panning and sluice boxes. Then came the huge dredges which were able to dig down to and into bedrock. These huge machines were built on the U.S. (this one in Ohio) and moved to the Yukon by ship and then train although the large gears had to be transported all the way around to the Northwest corner of Alaska and moved up the Yukon River by riverboat.
This is a dredge on Bonanza Creek. It, like all of the dredges, was brought in unassembled, a hole was dug, it was put together in the hole and floated on the water. Water was necessary to allow the dredge to be moved and for washing the materials picked up
The front of the dredge, as shown on the following diagrams, had a conveyor type system consisting of many buckets. The arm the buckets were on was lowered into the water and dug into the ground under the water. The buckets picked up the dirt, rock, and gold, and dumped those materials into a large turning cylinder which separated the small pieces from the large. The large materials (mainly rock) were conveyed off the back arm of the dredge and deposited into huge piles. These materials were called tailings. They are today being reprocessed since gold containing rock and large nuggets would not pass thru the holes inte drum.
This is one of the buckets and the following picture is the bucket line which was removed from the dredge once they finished their final dredging operation.
Some shots from within the dredge. Huge gears, the rotating drum, the control room with levers to control everything.
This is the pickup end with bucket line.
The inside of the drum. Rock and large pieces that didn’t pass thru the holes went onto a converyor and were dumped out the back end.
One of the riffle boxes which the finer materials passed thru, washed by water. The gold being some 16 times heavier than rock, settled to the bottom held in place by the riffles. Once every 2 or so weeks, the dredge would be shut down, all employees left he dredge, and company officials would clean out the riffles and remove the gold. Water would pass through this fiber screen to catch any gold dust in the water and the screen would be burned to recover that gold.
There is still a lot of gold in the area, this is a current day mining operation. When we went to a Provincial campground the night before leaving Dawson, the people in the next campsite were miners, in for the weekend to spend the evening in town, just like the olden days.
We went to see the original site where gold was discovered on Bonanza Creek. It is called the Discovery Claim and all claims above and below it on the creek were numbered from this claim.
This is a raven nest which was built under the dredge discharge arm.
A renowned location in the Dawson area is Midnight Dome, a hilltop where people gather to observe the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year with around 21 hours of daylight.
A statue in town honoring the miners. This entire area is still actively producing gold. When we walked over any ground, we didn’t even touch any rocks or dirt in fear of being charged with claim jumping. Someone owns all claim rights.
After spending not enough time (only 3 days) in theisfascinating town, we moved across the Yukon by ferry boat.
Along the river we saw this fish wheel, an item used by the First Nation people (Indians) to harvest salmon out of the river during the salmon runs each year.
We stayed at a Territorial Park our last night in the Dawson area so we could get an early start at the Top of the World Highway. Just outside of the campground is a riverboat “burial site” where old boats were beached and allowed to rot after they were no longer needed. A neat place to see although buried in the forest.
This ends our visit to Dawson City. Our next installment will include The Top of the World Highway, and thriving city of Chicken, Alaska, and on up towards Fairbanks. It might be a while before we do it since we leave tomorrow for glacier visiting and halibut fishing.
