July 10, 2025 - Driving from Alaska to Maryland
Gold Rush Dredge

We stopped in at the Visitor's Center on Front Street.  I saw this model of a giant dredge and found out an actual one still existed a few miles out of town.  So we decided to go check it out.

Dredge No. 4 is a wooden-hulled bucketline sluice dredge that mined placer gold on the Yukon River from 1913 until 1959. It is now located along Bonanza Creek Road  8.1 miles south of the Klondike Highway near Dawson City.  It is the largest wooden-hulled dredge in North America.
   
We arrive at Dredge No. Four.
 
The drive to the dredge was interesting.  The dirt road followed what was left of Bonanza Creek, a prime gold-bearing area.  I had read somewhere that they were trying to clean up and restore the dredged areas but I saw no evidence of this.  The area was just completely devastated, with connected piles of stone as if excreted by a huge catepillar all over the place.  It would cost a billion dollars to clean it up and restore the land.  Ain't never gonna happen.
 
 
   

I wasn't prepared for how massive this thing was.  It was as big as an eight story building.

The dredge cost $134,800 in 1912.
   
The structure rested on a floating wood barge.
 
The rotating 72-bucket excavator hangs out the front of the dredge.
 
 
   
The tailings stacker hangs out the rear.   The tailings go up a conveyer belt and are dropped off the end -- minus any gold they once contained, of course.
   
This wood sign shows the dredged worked.  72 large iron excavating buckets on a conveyer belt scooped up material from the gravel bank.  The material was processed in the dredge's main body, separating any gold out of the material.  The residue was released out the rear.
   
Lynnette stands next to one of the large iron excavating buckets.  Dredge #4 had 72 of them.
 
Each of the 72 buckets was capable of moving loads up to 16 cubic feet .  Each bucket weighed 3,340 lb, each flange 765 lb, and each securing pin 496 lb.
   
The dredge excavated gravel at the rate of 22 buckets per minute, processing 18,000 cubic yards of material per day. It was in use from late April or early May until late November each season, and sometimes throughout winter.
   
The Master Control Room was at top where all the windows are.
   

The dredge was decommissioned from 1959 and was abandoned where it lay.  It was purchased by Parks Canada in 1970 for $1, to become part of its proposed commemoration program for the Klondike goldfields.  It was not until 1991 that it was excavated, and in 1992 it was moved to its current site, where it is protected from seasonal flooding.  On 22 September 1997, Dredge No. 4 was designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

You can arrange to go on a guided tour but we did not have time for that.

Was the giant dredge effective?  During its operational lifetime, it captured nine tons of gold!
   
About a mile south of Dredge #4 was the actual spot where gold was discovered  in August 1896 by prospector George Carmack, his Tagish wife Kate, her brother Skookum Jim, and their nephew Dawson Charlie, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
   
 
   
 
   
Map of the area.
   

The actual spot where George Carmack, Skookum Jim, and Dawson Charlie discovered gold.

It reminded me of the Gold Discovery Site in Coloma, Calfornia where James W. Marshall discovered gold in 1848 on the South Fork of the American River.  This set off the California Gold Rush which had enormous impact on the United States.

The Klondike Gold Rush likewise had a huge impact on the Yukon and Alaska.   What struck me about the gold rush here was how inaccessible the area was.  Prospectors had to climb the Chilkoot Pass then make boats to float down the Yukon River.  And how far north it was.  Conditions in the winter are mind-boggling this far north.

 
   
Lynnette at the actual spot.  She thinks she has discovered a huge gold nugget!
   
That's a huge nugget; if only it was gold!
   
Looking up Bonanza Creek.
   
And down.
   
Unfortunately, most of the Bonanza Creek valley looks like this:  piles of rocks; i.e., dredge tailings.
   

We hiked the short discovery trail featuring gold mining artifacts and informational placards along the way.

This is one of the iron excavator buckets used by the dredges.
   
A placer box.
   
A sluice.
   
An underground mine.
   
 
   
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