![]() Pumps operated to rid the boat of this excess baggage. (Misadventure marked the glorious days of gold dredging, to be sure.) Like all dredges, No.1 leaked water. Often, just one swing across the pond took an eight-hour work shift.The Blue River Dredge Company’s No.1 dredge provides a good example of later gold boat function. That is why the tailings took on a wormlike configuration, especially discernable when viewed from the air. The dredge, secured to the shore by four cables and to the river bottom by a mammoth spud driven into the riverbed, pivoted on the spud, swinging a slow arc across the pond. ![]() Screened gravel went through an advanced sluice box device, which washed the gravel and allowed heavy gold to collect in riffles below, while lighter sand and gravel were carried away.Conveyor belts picked up the gravel tailings and transported them to an elevator assembly which dumped them via the stern chutes to the rear. Excavating in front and filling in behind caused the pond to move along the waterway.On board the dredge a screen separated large rocks from gravel material. After processing to retrieve the gold, these rocks tumbled from a conveyor belt off a chute behind the boat. Buckets on a revolving chain scooped up rock and gravel from the riverbed in front of the boat. The Tonopah dredge could proceed no farther on the creek, however, and was forced to turn around there.The dredge floated in its own self-made pond. The strike yielded a neat $40,000 worth of gold. The Tonopah dredge on French Creek once ran into a cliff of solid rock above the Wellington Mine that turned out to be ancient river bedrock. The powerful Tonopah Placers Company dominated area dredging at that time. While a total of nine dredges scoured bedrock gold in the Blue River area, only five worked at one time, during 19.
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