The photo of the week today is of a Canadian National Heritage Site. It is located just outside of Dawson City, Yukon and is unassumingly called Dredge 4. Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I am a huge fan of the Yukon, which is the site of my field work, and love talking about the gold rush history of the region. Very few things embody this history better than Dredge 4…the Discovery Claim may be the only better spot. Dredge 4 really represents the industrialization of gold rush mining. Dredging took backbreaking labour once done by men with picks and shovels and turned it into a truly industrial operation. This method of mining very effectively purged what gold was left in the Klondike district. However, placer mining of this scale had a huge impact on the local environment as some of the other photos will show. However, despite the impact the dredge and its mark are still incredible relics of gold rush history.
The next picture shows a schematic of how a dredge worked. The bare essentials are that the dredge would move along flooding the land beneath it so that it would float and all the while scooping up the gold bearing gravel below it. The gold was extracted inside and the cleaned gravels were “pooped” out the back of the dredge in large piles that litter the landscape today.