These are pictures were taken at Dawson City, Yukon Territory. The first picture, which looks something like a river boat is actually a large dredge, that was in service from 1913 to the early 1960's. Mining by dredges, operated by large companies replaced many of the small individual placer miners. The dredge worked by pulling up buckets of pay dirt on a continuous chain of iron buckets on the right hand side of the dredge in the picture, processing the gold-containing gravel by sluices inside the dredge, and discarding the tailing to the left. The dredges operated in the bottom of small creeks, digging a pool of water as it removed the pay dirt, and filling the pool behind it with tailings. Thus, although not readily apparent,the dredge was floating in a continuously self-made pool of water. The pay dirt was typically in a band of gravel, ten to twenty feet deep, below a tremendous level of overburden. Much of the work of mining was removing this overburden, which was usually frozen with permafrost. Systems had to be used to melt the permafrost, before it could be removed.
The top picture was taken on top of a high hill (mountain?) overlooking Dawson City. The view is looking up the Yukon River. I wanted to give you an idea how large the Yukon River actually is.
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