2 On the Road: Fairbanks, Alaska

The first tour for our full day in Fairbanks was to Gold Dredge #8. The dredge was opened for tours in 1984.

A section of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) runs across the entrance to the Gold Dredge tour so the first information we got was about the pipeline.

Looking up the pipeline. The white topped poles are the heat pipes.

Next we boarded an open-sided little train. The following are photos of the newspaper they had for us.

The Binkley's had to promote their other excursion, which we did later in the day.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has a great history of Gold Dredge #8 if you want further information about everything from the discovery of gold to the operation of the dredge.

I included this photo as it shows an example of the little sacks of rock/dirt/gold we later used to pan for gold. Between the two of us, we got $38 worth of gold. Our friends bought a bag, took it home and didn't find any gold.

Their goal was to try to get us to buy something to put our gold in.

Our guide was in the first car but tv screens let all of us see him and the rest of the presentation.

Presentation on how steam was used to carry processed gravel/dirt to tailings piles.

This drilling machine helped the miners get the gold out of the ground. It was a wheel-mounted cable tool rig that held a vertical boiler, vertical steam engine and the operating or hoisting wheels.

First the dredge needed water. Starting in the 1920s, water was brought to the area through the 90-mile (145 km) Davidson Ditch. The dredge cut a 4.5-mile (7.2 km) track and produced 7.5 million ounces of gold.

Pipes used to get water to the dredge.

Gold Dredge #8. Straight from the www.golddredge8.com website: "Described as either a floating workhorse or a mechanical gold pan, Gold Dredge 8 extracted millions of ounces of gold from the frozen Alaskan ground. Today, Gold Dredge 8 National Historic District serves as a monument to the hard working miners who built Fairbanks. Gold Dredge 8 is also a National Engineering Landmark."

"Gold Dredge 8 operated between 1928 and 1959 and played an essential role in mining and the economy of the Tanana Valley. It is said that dredges and mining saved Fairbanks. In 1942, gold mining suffered a serious setback; the War Productions Board issued it’s famous Order L-208 which forced the closure of all gold mines in the United States for the duration of World War II. After the war was over, very few mines re-opened. By the time the war ended, the miners that once ran the gold mines were in other professions and their wage levels had increased too high for gold mining to support. But Gold Dredge 8 was one of the few mines that did re-open and ran successfully until it was shut down for economic reasons in 1959."

Demonstration on how to pan for gold

Gold flakes clinging to top of pan.

The dredge crew worked in three shifts a day for around eight months a year. Work stopped each year when the dredge pond froze solid and resumed each spring when the dredge crews excavated four to five feet of ice from the pond to get the dredge working again. Minor repairs were made during periodic cleanups. If possible, major maintenance work was held until the winter shutdown. The work crews consisted of a skilled winch-man, two oilers and one or two roustabouts or general-purpose hands. The three shifts were supervised by a dredgemaster who supervised the twelve to fourteen people needed to operate the dredge.

Crew welcomes us to the place where we will pan for gold, have it weighed, peruse the gift shop and check out the historical displays. First, they gave us each a sack about the size of a baseball and lead us to the panning shelter.

Everyone takes a place at the panning troughs.

Each pan had a small container to put the gold in.

Sorry I got a little crooked on this sign.

We got to pick up this nugget and take photos.

Time to head to the dredge.

The mechanical giant was capable of digging 35 feet below the water line. Gravels were dug from the stream bed by the dredge's continuous bucket chain.

Gold was trapped on the riffles of the gold tables.

Looking up the conveyor.

Dredgemaster's Control Room.

You can find these dredge buckets for sale on Ebay for $2,500.

Here comes our train. We wound back through the area seeing old mining equipment until we found ourselves back where we started.

Next we headed off for the Binkley's other money-making tour, The Riverboat Discovery.

Well first we had a quick, and I mean quick, salad and stew lunch at the Binkley's dock, complete with attached gift shop. Can't go anywhere without a gift shop, can we?

The riverboat also had a newspaper.

The Discover I is still afloat. As we motored down the river, a narrator told us about the river and the citizen's living in the homes along the river. The ship moved to the side of the river, and we got a float plane demonstration as the plane landed and took off next to the ship a couple of times.

The next stop was alongside the home/training camp of Dave Butcher, husband of Susan Butcher. He told us about the training of the dogs then hitched up some of them to the engine-less ATV you see in the background. Their track had them passing in front of the ship four times. Once unhitched, the dogs hurried to the river for a cooling dip.

The dogs barked and moved all around while we were there. Especially the ones hitched to the ATV. They were raring to go.

Our narrator started talking about the difference between reindeer and caribou and suddenly three reindeer run out onto the riverbank. By the way, there is a photo further along in this post that explains the difference between reindeer and caribou.

The boat turns around at the confluence of the Chena and Tanana rivers. I was trying to capture the difference in the colors of the rivers. The Tanana is a glacier runoff river full of silt, so it is milky colored. The Chena is clear so when the two mix, it looks like creamer being dumped into coffee.

From the ship, we get a little information about Chena Village, a recreation of an Alaska Indian village.

This is a fish wheel that catches fish.

The boat stopped and we all get off to explore Chena Village.

We are divided into groups as we disembark, and each group is led off to a different area where we sit on benches to hear about the section of the village we are in. There are three sections. Once we see each of the presentations, we wandered around on our own.