Wade Gold Dredge, Alaska

Gold is good,
ghosts are too.

We found one. It doesn't look like much, you say? Well, to an old engineer and a dreamer, it does. You need to connect with the 'Serendip' approach to survive my mental detour from today's time flow. sorry.

This is a bucket line dredge. Brought to Alaska in the 1930s (no, I don't remember) and I suppose she dug up a lot of gold. That isn't the point. Look at my teeny little bike over there. Think about where we are, in one wild-assed creek in Alaska. Find it on the map. It is half way up the straight right side of the state! Imagine the journey. Imagine the greed, if you will. Think about, once again, big men and women doing big things, doing them under harsh conditions, and, as you can see from the shape of this huge machine, sometimes the best plans go bad. It looks to me like she wrecked, or just played out her ROI, and the marginal cost of the next bucket of 'precious' was not worth the effort. Damn, either way it could be one of my careers.

But I stayed right here, for many, many hours. This is no tourist trap. There is one little sign that says "Don't take anything" and another one that says "The boiler has been removed to some damn fool museum" -- but there were only two more bikers who visited for a few minutes, and a family of gold panners stopped for a couple of hours. I had it all to myself the rest of the time.

One thing you can see, from this picture and the next, is the way the earthen bank is crushing the side of the dredge. I think the last crash of the working life of this vessel took place while churning along in the middle of the stream. Looks to me like the modern day efforts to recover the artifacts took the 'easy' method of hauling dirt down the road, filling out the bank until they could just walk to the wreck. It's too convenient. To make it easier, they just kept dumping dirt down the bank until the slope of the repose actually was in the barge, and they could just winch up what they wanted to get by dragging it up the bank, not even getting their feet wet. Probably some effete academics. Just my supposition though.

The weather is just perfect. You might not think so, but there was a gentle breeze, and a welcome one because in the sun the temp was about 85! That water is ice cold. I know, because I waded. I just dropped my jeans and put on my shorts. No one around, remember? I was getting so hot climbing around the structure, running back to my bike to get lenses, film, the requisite lunch (again, thanks to the family with the cooler!) and so on. I tried to figure out what happened.

This is a real, working water vessel. It is built on a sturdy barge, strong hulled, and very shallow draft. I had some time making the conclusion, though, that she was not an independent powered vessel. My best guess is that she was towed from wherever she was, and when she got into her element, everything changed. I bet there were a whole bunch of burly guys, who had to go ahead and cable her to trees and rocks, and winch her upstream. What I want to do is contact some mining engineer (email me!) and have it explained.

But, I also found some clues that she did not go down with a whimper. I think it was with a bang. Look again at the above picture. There is this huge wooden frame, with a set of powerful blocks and at the bottom, a red spreader. I think this was to maneuver the big bucket conveyor for the up-current end. The dredge must have found the gold strata in the stream bed, and gobbled it up into the interior to concentrate. Well, it was all disconnected when I got there, and not by some big footed blockhead who likes to kick what he sees, like the Inukshuk rock-man destroyer. This failure came, I think, directly in the pursuit of the endeavor.

Broken Spreader Angled

At the bottom of the spreader, there is a cast iron chain set, and I had to lean 'way out to get the idea into an image. Please excuse the slanty angle.

The chains, to get broken like that, took more than an overweight biker standing on the conveyor. At times like this, I wish I could get into the company books, the daily log of operations for that day. I bet the turn foreman had hell to pay.

Think back on that crew, that day, working. I can hear the roar of that machinery, the men shouting or signaling the next move of the draggling or to slew the whole hull this way or that. Maybe there was a big current and heavy strain to keep her on location. Maybe it was just a calm stream like today, and they sort of dug a working pond to mine, churning up the pay dirt and spewing the tailings out the back.

Probably guyed by cables, processing the gravel at a great rate, and life was good. Then, maybe all of a sudden, they hit a boulder. Maybe the buckets got stuck and they tried to muscle the thing out by overloading the lift blocks. Kaboom it breaks. Maybe they used bad words. Maybe somebody got hurt. I wonder and wonder.

Here's the chain.

Those are cast iron links, heavy, and very difficult for some passer-by to get to or burn with a torch if they could. I think we are looking at what happened at the last working instant of the life of this dredge.

Now I spent a lot of time day dreaming right here.

I think this is where the operator had the most fun. Sure, we had a whole bunch of guys all over the craft, but from here you must have controlled the drive on the conveyor bucket lift, the depth, and maybe even the winches to do the fore and aft, left and right slew to keep the flow of ore into the works.

Those are the big lift blocks right out the window, hear the steam engine and gear train behind you? If you turn around, there is a stairway going down. The controls and levers coming out of the deck are connected below. Let's take a look.

Powertrain Stairs

Now, remember, this is a gold digging machine. Let's say you're all tired, something goes wrong, and you want to go below in some haste. Don't slip. There's no handrail, and no evidence of covers on those gear trains, clutches, and cable drums. If you fell in, you would probably just lube up the teeth and cause a lot of paperwork.

Maybe that's it. Maybe OSHA visited this barge one day and slapped a padlock on the door.

No offense.

If somebody from the millwright gang back at the Q-BOP sees this, please write and explain which gear does what, and ask old Oilin' Davis if he made his rounds last night.

Let's go aft, at this level, and see what's in the big house. First thing, look at the deck. This hull is resting solidly on the bottom, and when the water level raises, the place floods up at least several feet. The silt is all over, and anything small or that floats is washed away. I know nobody would pilfer.

I think the power plant went here, in the foreground at the open space to the left. It's all gone, and what remains looks as if it was taken apart just recently, within a couple of years. Since the structure is all deteriorating, I guess it couldn't be restored in place, but wow would I like to try.

Now, at your center is the drive for the concentrator. That first smooth wheel is a belt driven input for power to the reduction gear train to your right. I can hear it running now; you? It's just slightly out of alignment {We never touched it, Boss, it looks like the midnight guys were drunk again}. The train climbs up in a series of reduction gears and angle drives, then rolls the drum around like a cement mixer. The drum end itself looks like a big open pipe, up by the sunlight. See the big dump - lip coming toward us?

I'm going to move ahead, spin to my right, and give you the shot from the side. {Note, an eagle-eyed and possibly bored reader spent way too much time on this page, and he noticed the next image was posted upside-down. Thanks to Don, a member of the "Don and Evelyn" team, for pointing this out to me, and using great tact and forbearance in doing so. Not one mention of the Agave's spirits was made... }

Just look at that beautiful, perforated drum in the center of the picture.

I'm getting all excited now. Can you hear the loud, felt-thumping of a reciprocating steam engine? It starts off regular, but the sound multiplies into gear ratio harmonies directed towards the different sections, base brass is the torque winches for moving the hull. Medium but steady power for the conveyor and the drum concentrator, and the intermittent call for lifting and slewing of the conveyors. Damn, I'm sure they had a whistle too, or they should. These old machines still speak to my imagination, and as I piece together how they must have worked, the men come back to life and I can almost watch them work too.

I think it works like this: The good stuff comes in from the right. The drum is rolling as the big rocks and pebbles are eliminated first. Then the middle section gradually gets the marble sized ones trapped and dumped. At last, the gravel and sand and, we all hope, the precious cargo of the fines are gently encouraged to the glory end. Here, who knows what happens, but from the looks of this tub, it goes overboard to some other process, and eventually enriches some capitalist and the good folks who invested in him/her. Back then, physically, this stuff probably wound up in Fort Knox, if my old movie education is factual. It has quite a trip ahead of it, but only for these first few seconds has it seen the light of day under the control of man.

Now, we've been getting along pretty good so far, right? I gotta ask you for a favor. I'm betting Judy will have gotten really bored by now, and never read this, so don't tell her about the next part, OK? If you look down the way in the above picture; you just might notice some structural uncertainty in the distance. Well, in the need to provide for you, the honored guests of the pilgrimage, I need to get a better angle on the real heart of how the dredge does its job. To do so, I had to get outside (there is NO safe path between the operator's house and where I want to go), then climb up several rickety ascents to the upper deck, and sort of cliff hang along and kind of fall into an opening - just to get this 'last' photo:

Now, you critics of whether a mature man of immoderate girth should be here, do not think about the integrity of the deck I'm standing on. It is the one with all the holes in it you saw from below. It is so rotten, when I walk I actually feel it cracking and sagging as I cross the spans.

Back on the wall of the shanty (I won't call it the bridge, because even though this is technically a watercraft, when you look in there it doesn't have any such equipment. The top of the conveyor is in there, which dumps into one of those tapered chutes) you can see the

"WADE NO1"

in faded old rustoleum. If any of you know anything - like if this is the first of the Jack Wade series, please send me information or just post a note in the guestbook.

No, Virginia, don't go lookin for the guestbook on the fantail, just use the one on my website... .

Don't criticize the path I had to take. I could get all philosophical on you and go on a rant. My notes from this interlude sound like an inquiry into longevity, and the wrack and ruin of a fine old worker snuck up on me.

So as we leave this proud old workhorse, let's not get stressed about how some dolt pushed dirt on her skirts, in your mind's eye, straighten out all the damage and give her a coat of paint.

Put the hard miners back on board, and let them get rich. Their ghosts are still in there, just be quiet, there, what was tha?

I felt them. And lets soak up their dreams and maybe their memories, I wish them well.

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