Click each photo to greatly enlarge it
The Pedro Dredge, originally owned by the Fairbanks Exploration Company (FE Co.),
a subsidiary of the United States Smelting Refining & Mining Co. (USSR&M), was built by the Yuba
Manufacturing Company in California, and was shipped to Pedro Creek north of Fairbanks in 1938.
It was assembled there, and operated until 1958. The following year it was disassembled,
trucked over the Alaska and Taylor Highway to Chicken and reassembled over a 3 month span. The dredge commenced operations on lower Chicken Creek in
September of 1959 and worked approximately five months every year thereafter until October 1967, when
it produced its final cleanup.
The 3-cubic-foot dredge (measurement of the bucket capacity), the smallest in
the FE Co.'s fleet of 8 behemoth gold mining machines, mined over 55,000 ounces of gold in the eight years on Chicken Creek, equivalent to roughly 160
million dollars in gold at modern prices.
In 1998, after sitting idle for 31 years, the million pound dredge was moved one mile in one piece, on a trailer
constructed in place, to the Chicken Gold Camp & Outpost. It was moved a short distance again in 2009, floating
to it's present location. The dredge was listed as a National Historic Site and opened to the public in
August 2006. It is the most complete bucket line gold dredge open to the public on the Alaska/Yukon road system. Tours are available; please inquire in the "Outpost" about the current schedule. Adjoining the dredge and throughout the Gold Camp/Chicken RV park, an assemblage of historical gold rush
equipment and buildings, can be viewed for free. There is a map and free informational flyers about the historical items and the dredge on the deck of "Outpost".
tours are now offered daily
throughout the season.
For much more information on our dredge, see Mike's article at
ExploreNorth. A great deal of other information about Northern
gold dredges and mining generally, can also be found from the links on that page.
