Alaska! Panning for Gold

Dredge 8 in Fairbanks was a great adventure even though it was raining harder than it had in years.  Our tour started off with the "Conductor" on the narrow gauge train entertaining us with Country and Cajun music.  Quite interesting with the rain beating on the roof and the engine starting.  He was pretty good.  The stops enroute to the panning site had a narrator who happensed to be a history teacher in the off-season.  Lots of interesting info on the types of mining conducted in the Fairbanks area.  Then we saw the large dredge and heard about how it was moved here and how it operated.  Of course the highlight of the trip was actually getting to pan for gold.  It was set up for tourists with long, deep water troughs filled with WARM water.  None of this going into the cold creeks. I only wish we were going to stay at least 3 more days.  I would go up to the hills and pan in the creeks.  Love Fairbanks.

At the outset Bob only wanted to see the Dredge.  Here he is studiously learning how to pan.  In AK, they really must take care of tourists.  Tent over panning tables.

Narrow gauge.  Amazing how much equipment they had to carry on these things.

Difficult to explain placer mining but they miners dug a hole in ground containing gold, then they picked rocks apart and sent them to guy on top in a bucket.

The guy on top would get the bucket from the hole and send it over to the pile of rocks.  He also had to keep the fire stoked in the makeshift furnace in pic on left.  All this was during the winter.  His job was the hardest.

Gold was left in the tailings from placer mines but too costly to retrieve.  Later on FE bought lots of these mining areas and built a plant producing electricity and pumped water up to work area then shot the rocks with big watergun.

This is Dredge 8.  Can you imagine moving this huge thing on a tiny train?  Of course it was in parts and I'm sure it took more than 1 trip.