Klondike Goldfields

North Klondike Highway
Km 703.8 - Tailing Piles

By 1905 the richest ground of the Klondike had been mined. Claims had to be worked more effectively and economically and so small operations gave way to large corporations and correspondingly large machinery. By 1913 there were 12 dredges operating in the Klondike drainage.

A dredge was a huge floating sluicing plant that pivoted on a "spud" while its bucket line continuously excavated material. As the dredge advanced, the valuable material was processed through a series of screens and sluiceboxes. The waste gravels - called tailings - were fed into a sloped belt, or tailings stacker, which swung from side to side, feeding them into rows of cresent-shaped piles.

Dredges were enormous; one promoter's first dredge took over a year to reach the Yukon and cost twice to ship than it did to buy. A dredge could dig and process up to 16,000 cubic yards in 24 hours. Dredge #4 - which can be visited on Bonanza Creek - dredged 65 million yards in 46 years. The largest dredges could recover up to 800 ounces of gold in a single day.

Yukon Ditch

In the early 1900s, as mining grew in scale, the need for water also grew. Mining promoter A.N.C. Treadgold, "the man of diminutive stature and big ideas" conceived the idea of building a ditch to bring water from the Little Twelvemile and the Tombstone rivers in the mountains north of Dawson City. He eventually obtained the financial backing of the Guggenheims.

The 'ditch' was actually a 70 mile system of wooden flume, ditch and pipe that carried 55,000 gallons of water per minute. The system relied on gravity alone - no pumps were involved. Work began in 1906 and took three seasons of four months each. By April of that year a portable sawmill was set up in the area to provide lumber. The route traversed rugged country and most freighting was done in the winter using heavy sleighs pulled by six horses and carrying 16 tons.

The million-dollar project was an enormous undertaking - the flume was six feet wide and four feet deep and more than seven million boardfeet of lumber were used. The redwood stave pipe, up to four feet in diameter, was imported from California, milled in the Yukon, then bound with half-inch bands of iron.

Next Bonanza Creek Road Km. 0.1 - Guggieville
Previous Km. 668.2 - Klondike River