Yankee Fork Dredge - Idaho
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2021
- There are lots of different ways to mine for those precious metals we hold so dear. We had the opportunity to tour one method we knew very little about. Dredging.
The Yankee Fork Dredge could do the same amount of work in one day as 300,000 men panning. The amount of gold ore it could find beneath the water's surface was quite hefty, but it also took a lot to keep this dredge operational.
Come along and see what a remarkable machine was built and retired high in the Idaho Mountains.
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My Dad, Art Browning, worked there 1950 - 1952 when it shut down for the last time. J,R. Simplot was the last owner who some years later donated the dredge to the U.S. Forest Service.. It sat there for about 30 years. In 1977 Bart Nordling, employed by the Forest Service, tracked former employees down and held a reunion. My parents, myself and my uncle, John Sams attended as well as number of others. In 1979 a second reunion was held. Following that, former employees and their families formed the Yankee Fork Gold Dredge Association. Art and Sue Browning served on the first Board of Directors. In the summer of 1980 members of the Association began work on the restoration by cleaning up debri and vandalism and doing repair work. It was several years before tours could be held. The Forest Service provided a camp ground for the volunteers (and continues to do so.) Several members of our family have taken part in the years since. Thank you for your story and tour of the dredge, it is accurate and well done. Jo Anne Browning Busch
You are more than welcome Jo Anne and thank you for the information. I wonder if there were photos of your dad on the museum wall!
It is a beautiful piece of history and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit.
Hopefully you’ll enjoy our other explores just as much.
We were fortunate enough to visit Bonanza ghost town which was just up the road.
As the saying goes..."Gold is where you find it!" Thanks for the tour!
Massive wenches? rewinds, oh winches, got it. ; ) Great video!
Can you imagine the loud machinery sounds, the heat and the machine oil smells going on all at once. The workers smell like the machine equipment.
That tour would be worth $5.
That was pretty neat! Wow!
It's a shame people are robbing . Be safe.
No wonder a lot of miners have hearing issues. Plus the noise would echo! I remember going on a cruse ship when I was young, and the smell made me feel really sick! Glad you came along for the tour, Wayne. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for your continuous support.
@@PinInTheAtlas 🙂👍
That thing is impressive! If you tuned in half way through the video you might think you're getting tour of a ship!
Yes, it is massive. We only covered about half too. Glad you enjoyed it.
I am glad you got to see this too when you guys were here.
Pretty amazing place, Siri.
Wow! What an amazing engineering construction. I did not know that such huge floating excavators existed. Downside was all diesel used and devastation to river bed and environment. Awesome to learn something new! This really was an amazing find. Have to admit, I love smell of oil, machinery, wood, gas and diesel. Must have been really awesome to see it in full operation on the river. Look forward to next time 🤙🏽🙌🏽
Being able to touch and smell really does bring an added feature to these places. It would have been quite an amazing sight to see this thing getting down to business back in the day. True it is a shame the devastation it left in its wake though they are trying to correct it now.
An interesting tour of what I would call a "Giant Strip Mining Machine". So pleased to hear that all gate takings go to preservation of this historic mining monster.
We are too, it is such an impressive machine to see in person and Billy has great first hand knowledge of how it all works.
Who needs Transformers with (historical) leviathans like this around? :-)
Looks like the dredge was inspirational for that Wild Wild West steam spider LOL.
Another awesome adventure with Andrea and Steve oh and my cup of coffee thanks again that was really cool
More to come! Enjoy your coffee, Raymond.
What a dredge!! Yee-Haa!!! What a trip back through time. Absolutely an amazing video! Well put together. You are doing an incredible series about all those places and things of our past. Great job! One little detail however: Those were cooling coils. Although in the spring and fall months if you worked on board you'd call them "warming coils". You can bet they were probably called better things than that. Dripping wet, 20 degrees out...Blessed warming coils?? They were used to cool the electrical charge before it hit the motors. Pan Andrea, pan. Hope you get to use it:) Hint...buy or look for a small screen to lay over the top. Cheaper than a classifier. And if you do you'll bring a golden smile to you and yours with the gold that you get in it. Pure gold (.9999) is 19.3 times heavier than H2O , but pure gold isn't found in nature. Usually alloyed with copper and/or silver. Still cooking down here. 111 yesterday.
Thank you so much Richard, we are trying our best to seek out these wonderful treasures! We are not missing those triple digit temps that is forsure!
Great visit. That Machine is enormous!! Enjoyed it guys. See ya on the next video.
I don't know why I am so intriguied watching these mining and videos but it is soo relaxing when I am stressed out hope you are doing well and can't wait for your next video. You deserve way more than 7.12k videos but you are getting there...8-)
Thank you for your support. Glad you are enjoying our content. Many more explores to come, and not just mining vids. See you on our next adventure.
These things are amazing machines. They are all over Alaska. And as you can see it's a mining machine that digs up the placers, deposits them into the tromel after classifying and then it all goes through the sluice until you finally have washed gold. So the mining, and the milling is all done by one machine.
They are pretty amazing. On the down side, the destruction they do to the rivers and the environment. Shame they can't at least put the rocks back in the river as they go.
Glad I'm not late for history class. Hope I fail so I can take it again. Absolutely beautiful views of your travels. Outstanding job of your videos and pictures. Thanks for sharing this with us that watch your channel. Well done sir and ma'am.
Thank you so much, glad you enjoyed it, Edward.
@@PinInTheAtlas call me Ed... You have a great format.
@@edwardparkhurst9804 Thanks, Ed.
Hey Andrea, I'm also 5' 3 1/2" tall. This place is very interesting. Thanks!
Excellent video you two!
WOW,KNOCKED IT OUT THE PARK..THANK YOU BILLY N FOLKS...VERY COOL TAILING PILE.MASSIVE COMPARED TO THE ONE IN FEATHERVILLE..THANK YOU GUYS..SAFE TRAVELS.KEEP ON KEEPING ON!
Thanks Ralph, the rock piles just kept going and going!
They ran these in California too. Many piles of tailings all over the central valley in the alluvial deposits where the gold had come down from the hills. These were quite the beasts!
They are massive! Such a sight to see, can't begin to imagine the noise they would produce.
What a wonderful piece of machinery and I bet it made quite a lot of noise were you could hear it in town.
Wow such machinery huge !! Great to see this site. Amazing guys thanks
Very, very INTERESTING 😃👌👍. THANK YOU FOR SHARING 😉😊👋👌🤙👍☝
Glad you enjoyed it. If you’re ever in that neck of the woods we recommend a visit
Another exemplary video. That dredge explained many of the mysterious bits and pieces you have come across in your explores. Very interesting. You two are quickly becoming one of my favorites ♥. Carry on.
Thank you so much, we are continually learning and loving this. So happy you are joining us on our adventures! Many more to come!
Thank you that was a awesome visit and as usual you folks were great showing us the past thank you
Glad you enjoyed our visit, Tim. There certainly is a lot of history in those parts. Billy is wonderful. If you ever get the chance to go, it's definitely worth it.
Fascinating seeing the dredge from the inside. Thanks to Billy. Enjoyed seeing the old photos also! Great video, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed our tour. Lots to see there, definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.
Thank you for the in depth tour of the Yankee Gold dredge I will put this on my list and will be sending this to alot of people. P.s. in Sumster Oregon is a dredge like this a state run park and tour which ran on electric power miles away .and a narrow gage steam train you can go on .🚂📷🤔
Thank you very much! Really that sounds very intriguing will have to Pin that on our Atlas to check out!
Tony Beets on Gold Rush has 2 of those monster dredges
Will have to check that out, Thanks Peggy.
That was nice to have volunteers, such as Bill, at this historic site, who are schooled and familiar with the place. Of course, both of you, Steven and Andrea, always do your own research, add info and interesting tidbits to the story, and respect the places you visit. Some of those facts were simply amazing. Thanks for taking us along, on another super adventure, Andrea and Steven. 🌞💛🤠👏
Bill is very knowledgable about the inner working of this dredge as his Father and Grandfather were apart of it so that is phenomenal! This was such an enjoyable video for us and thank you so much for all of your support Rhonda, we truly appreciate it.
I was stationed in Idaho, 83-85. Used to hunt that area. Been there several times.
It certainly is a beautiful area.
Hi Steven and Andrea ,We have the remains of a dredge about the same size in a little town in N/E Victoria that goes by the name of Eldorado ,unfortunatly our dredge is just a rusted , stripped out partly sunken pile of historic scrap metal ,So it was great to see what it would have been like back in the day,I will just about bet that any one who worked on it ended up with hearing problems , they have done a fantastic job of rebuilding /looking after it ,Thanks for the walk through ,John Keane ,Aus.
Glad you enjoyed it and were able to see a dredge almost fully intact. Billy was amazing and full of stories about his grandpa and dad who worked on it.
Yall forgot brute. Great video btw this is by far the best place to go
We’ll be back for Brute. Lol. Glad you enjoyed it Jen.
Well done guys! Definitely will put a pin in the Atlas to visit that site. Thank you! 🤠🌲🎼
It’s really interesting and definitely worth a pin. Glad you enjoyed it Brad.
Really nice video. Just think of when this stuff was made and operating....all that gigantic machinery made by highly skilled tradesmen back when you could still find the local blacksmith shops all over, and the fledgling airlines were starting out....just mind blowing what they could do back in those days......
It certainly is. Also, getting the machinery and equipment to the locations - way out in the middle of nowhere!
That dredge is in excellent shape! Many used in Alaska and Canada are rotting derelicts. Imagine building these monsters on sight! I don’t think silver was mined with this machine, it’s set up for gold. Silver is found in ore and has to be refined. Very interesting video! Thank you so much!!
It would have been very interesting to see how it was constructed back in the day. Glad you enjoyed our tour. See you on our next adventure.
@@PinInTheAtlas There are pictures in the dredge museum of the trucks owned by Lindberg Trucking Company of Mackay that hauled much of the machinery in over mountain roads in 1942. Three of the truck drivers also helped with Association and restoration.
⚡️’Wonder how much ‘gold’ 🤩 could possibly have been left behind 🥳⚒🦬🏴☠️🚩
Apparently, there is still quite a lot, but it's not worth the financial cost to dig it up!
Add a link for people to donate to this organization that is saving this historic site, there might be some who can donate directly to them ....thanks
Andrea and Steve,
Did they really only break even?
That seems rather unlikely.
I wonder how many custom dredges were used during the gold era
and if any are still used somewhere today?
Truly a feat of engineering.
Cheers,
Rik
Either that or they had a really good accountant!
@@PinInTheAtlas LOL
Rik
There were at least three dredges in Boise County operating in the 1940's (after the war) There may be some information on them before the war. One was at Idaho City and two in Centerville area. Art Browning worked first on one in Centerville and later on one on the Yankee Fork. I think there were others.
Thanks for the info Jo Anne.
Thought i ‘heard’ one of the original miners👷🏽♂️there went on an invented ‘the very first’ ‘hearing - Aid 🤣👂
You never know. Anything is possible!
you ever heard throw a monkey wrench in the works paint on wall for tools were to track tools ,so that they didn't get left in the works it did happen
Oh I'm sure it happened quite a bit, we have all done silly things at one point or another. Have heard the expression before and now know where it originated from. Thanks Dave!
How did the dredge come at the spot? sailing through digged canals or constructed at the spot? But how to construct a big barge overyhere I must say I see more mysteries in the old minimg world like heavy engines and winches 100 miles in a desert and high in the mountains
Probably floated a lot of the machinery up the river. Remember the river was a lot wider in those days. But the dredges were assembled in a purpose built pond next to the river.
Is that by Sumpter, oregon?
Idaho
Hey kids, get a hold of me. ASAP. Have a real cool place that i thought you might want to check out. It'll knock your socks off. Ghost town in N.M.
Email us Richard
@@PinInTheAtlas Just sent you a email. Let me know if i'm on the right address.
It's the Yankee Fork dredge. Not forge. This is on the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River.
You are correct, Carolyn. It is on the fork of the Salmon River. Have you been to see the dredge? It's so interesting, and Billy is full of knowledge.
Yes I have seen the dredge. I grew up camping in the Stanley basin area. Yankee Fork is one of my favorites areas to camp. There is an old gold mining ghost town in top of Estes mountain in that area also.
@@carolyndennis4201 It is a wonderful area. We will pin that ghost town you mentioned for next time. If you have any other locations that you would like us to explore, please email us. info4pinintheatlas@gmail.com.
As you probably know, we only give out the names of locations that are well known. Others we attempt to preserve by not giving locations or the correct name. Thanks, Carolyn. Glad you enjoyed our explore.
Were you guys ever school teachers?
Lol. No. Why do you ask?