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Published: July 22nd 2011
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July 16th, 2011 Yukon River Campground 62 degrees with high clouds with possibility of some sun. Starting mileage 11909
Crossed by ferry to Dawson City. Checked out the very small farmer’s market and bought a large sack of really fresh, washed Swiss chard for $3.50 and 1 zuke for $2.00. Town is absolutely full of people!! Lots and lots of them are young people in for the Music Festival plus the usual crowd that come to town on a Saturday to shop.
Drove around town and read the historical signs on about half of the buildings. Looked at the fully restored Robert Service’s and Jack London’s cabins which were less than a block from each other. We then toured the ½ of the City Museum and watched a black and white, very interesting, documentary film made about the town in the 1950’s.
Went back to Rosie and made sandwiches for lunch. After lunch, we toured the other ½ of the museum. The museum wasn’t that big, just that we were about at lunch time when we
started the tour and the ticket allowed in and out all day. Why one would need more than an hour or so, I couldn’t say. Only two rooms to look at.
Drove south out of town, crossed the Klondike River and then turned up a side road and drove along Bonanza Creek. We came to Dredge #4 about 8 miles in. The dredge is the largest wooden hulled, bucket line dredge in all of North America. It is absolutely HUGE. When most of the miners left, big mining companies came in and were granted huge concessions of land to mine. Miner’s claims were 250 feet along the creek and 500 feet back. The mining companies were granted 400 acres for their claim. The dredges worked a continuous 24 hour period for as long as it was warmer than 40 degrees below freezing. The dredges got bigger as the years went along and they were getting so much gold out of this area.
We climbed all through #4 with a Park Ranger giving the tour. It was extremely interesting to see how it worked. The dredges floated on ponds they continually dug as they worked their way up this
valley taking a continuous load of buckets of gravel and dumping them in a slanted rotating drum with holes in it. The gold being 19 times heavier than water, fell through onto mats below. They operated in this Valley from 1905 until 1966. One of the pictures Valerie took was a raven’s nest built on the beams of the dredge. It is so big we thought it was an osprey or eagle’s nest.
After the dredge tour, we drove further up the creek to the spot where gold was discovered. Walked down to the creek but, didn’t do any panning. Could have if we knew how and had a gold pan---didn’t think a paper plate or any of the Correll glass plates were quite right shape to do a good job plus it looked like a lot of back breaking work!!
On our way back down the road, we stopped and watched some ducks in one of the ponds. There were about 15-20 of them, sort of in a line, and they would all swim in one direction and then, as if someone gave an order, they all swam in the other direction. We think they may have
been a group of immature ducks just changing feather colors, as we sure couldn’t figure out what kind they were.
Drove into town and then on-to the ferry back to the campground. Chicken and fresh Swiss chard for dinner, yummmm! At least for me, after all, Swiss chard IS a green veggie.
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