Imagine George Carmack, his Indian wife, Katy, and their two nephews, hanging around the campfire, while Katy washed the laundry in the river, suddenly someone finds a gold nugget the size of a dime, and then some flakes......this is where the Gold Rush started, right here, Bonanza Creek, we are in our motorhome a few miles in front of it, at Bonanza RV Resort
There wasn't a whole lot of people here today, most were at the gold mines that were dug into the mountains, but this is where I wanted to go, where it all began, George staked this out in August 1896, the second stake was in September, that's when word got out that there was gold in the Yukon, but it took two years for people to get here, all the good stakes were gone in two weeks, the people got here and had nothing to do, then gold was found on the beaches of Nome, so they jumped in their boats and floated up the Yukon to Nome
There wasn't a whole lot of people here today, most were at the gold mines that were dug into the mountains, but this is where I wanted to go, where it all began, George staked this out in August 1896, the second stake was in September, that's when word got out that there was gold in the Yukon, but it took two years for people to get here, all the good stakes were gone in two weeks, the people got here and had nothing to do, then gold was found on the beaches of Nome, so they jumped in their boats and floated up the Yukon to Nome
This woman was busy gold mining like she was at the slot machines, her son, had obviously lost interest
My gold pan is in my shed, or I'd still be there, I asked the Park Ranger weren't they concerned that someone would find alot of gold, she said no, it had been dredged 3 times
My gold pan is in my shed, or I'd still be there, I asked the Park Ranger weren't they concerned that someone would find alot of gold, she said no, it had been dredged 3 times
It doesn't show in this picture but every one of these stones and the sand had a very, very fine dusting of gold, I asked the Park Ranger and she said it was too fine to be worth anything but I picked up a few anyway, the town bought the rights to this claim and you can gold mine to your hearts content, they don't care, and keep whatever you find
Dawson City and the area around it was a moose bog, swampy, still is, in some places, we caught this cutie as we were driving by
These dredges were brought in to turn the moose bog into a gold mine, they cost 3 times as much to ship than buy, they dam a creek, float the dredge on it, then use all the water to sluice the gravel to find the gold, they just have alot of tailings left over, they dredged until the 60's
There wasn't any EPA around here when the gold mining was done, the hills are torn up and most of the town looks like a gravel pit has gone amuck, they have found ways to crush these tailings and build on top of it, this RV resort did that
There wasn't any EPA around here when the gold mining was done, the hills are torn up and most of the town looks like a gravel pit has gone amuck, they have found ways to crush these tailings and build on top of it, this RV resort did that
These dredges were brought in to do the mining faster than humans could do, they scooped up the hillside, ran in through a screen to pick out the smaller pieces of rock and spit out the rest, I asked the Park Ranger if they weren't afraid of spitting out a large piece of gold and she said no, that the kind of gold they had there was very small, flake like
The first thing you see when you come into town is miles and miles of "tailings" piled everywhere, they are the gravel that is left when they dredge for gold
There is alot of old mining equipment sitting around, considering they stopped the bulk of the mining in the 60's it's all pretty rusty
The final use for the dredging buckets
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