Bucket Line Dredges - Monster Machines of the Goldfields

The early bucket line dredge was a massive piece of machinery used to recover and process large amounts of gravel to recover gold. The were unlike anything else at the time. Since they could move so much gravel, they could efficiently work ground that was unprofitable by other methods. They could process tons and tons of gravel in a day, and many of them operated around the clock. The heyday of the bucket dredge was the early to mid-1900s. By the 1950s it seems that most of the gold districts throughout the Western United States and Alaska had a dredge working the river bottoms. They are credited with millions of ounces of gold. Most of the dredges are long gone now. Most were decommissioned and their metal was scrapped. Only a handful of these ancient machines exist today, but some have been well cared for and are popular sites to visit. For more information on early mining history and gold prospecting information, come and visit us over at raregoldnuggets.com.