Down a rough gravel road south of Dawson City sits a boatlike wooden structure the size of a small office building. It was part of the second phase of the Klondike gold industry, where investors with deep pockets built enormous, complicated projects that scooped up endless tons of riverbed gravel to wash the gold out.
Dredge No.4 was built in 1912 for the Canadian Klondike Mining Company to get at the gold that was trapped deep in gravel. It is one of the largest wooden mining dredges ever built in North America. Powered by specially-built hydroelectric plants north of Dawson City, these dredges scooped up gravel from the stream bed, washed the gold out, and dumped the gravel out the other end. Over the course of its operations, it unearthed nine tons of gold, grossing 8.6 million dollars.
The dredge operated until 1959, when rising labor costs and declining gold prices spelled the end of the Klondike Gold Dredges. Dredge No.4 was left to sink into the frozen ground under its own weight, until it was acquired by Parks Canada in 1970. By then it had to be blasted out of the frozen riverbed by military engineers before restoration work could begin. The inside of the dredge still has all of the massive equipment required to process the gravel.
The site of Dredge No.4 can be accessed year round, although tours of the interior are only available during the summer season through the Parks Canada office in Dawson City or local tours.
