Dredge No. 4

Dredge tailings as you enter Dawson City

During the 1898 Gold Rush north from Skagway, up the trail to Bennent Lake, down the Yukon River to Whitehorse and onto Dawson City.  The gold prospectors had a very hard journey just to get to the gold fields.

This is dredge #4 the only one left of about 27 dredges that worked the river valleys in the Yukon. The tower above raised and lowered the dredge buckets that were a continuous conveyer belt scooping up the rocks and gold sediment. The buckets dropped the sediment into a 90 foot long turning tunnel that sifted out the larger rocks and the smaller sediment was washed into sluice boxes that were lined with mesh and rope matting that caught the gold. Rocks and other left over sediment was passed out the back of the dredge onto scalloped shaped tailings. The dredge is a boat and floats on it's own pond.

Dredge #4 is a National Historic Site and they are in the process of gradually restring her.

Row of dredge buckets waiting to be reinstalled on to Dredge #4