Tailings from Sumpter Valley Gold Dredging

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Tailings from Sumpter Valley Gold Dredging

June 17, 2007.

We are staying at Mountain View Travel Park in Baker City, Oregon. $24.79 FHU, shade and a nice enough RV-Park. It must be a former KOA (Keep On Adding) since they charge extra for everything, $2 extra for wifi, $2 extra for larger sites, you get the picture Keep On Adding.

 

 

Tailings left by Sumpter Valley Gold Dredges

Tailings left by Sumpter Valley Gold Dredges

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three gold dredges operated in the Sumpter Valley, on and off, from 1913 to 1954. Periods of dredging activity were influenced by the fluctuating prices of gold, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and equipment breakdowns. The dredges dug up 2,500 acres of farmland extracting approximately $10,000,000 in gold.

 

 

 

 

 

Tailings left by Sumpter Valley Gold Dredges

Tailings left by Sumpter Valley Gold Dredges

 

 

 

 

Dredging ended when profitable land for mining became scarce-----in other words they dug up the entire valley.

These rock piles have been exposed since dredging activity ceased in 1954.

 

 

Three dredges operated on and off in the Sumpter Valley.

The dredge on display at Sumpter Valley State Park dug up thousands of acres of Sumpter Valley during the 19-years it operated here. It extracted about 9-tons of gold (about one cubic yard). At current gold prices of say $350 an ounce that would be 9-tons of gold worth, by my calculations, $100,800,000.

A gold dredge is basically a giant shovel mounted on the deck of a boat. Instead of one bucket, this dredge had 72, each weighing a ton (as much as my Saturn automobile). The assembly of buckets was called the digging ladder.

This dredge was built on dry land (for about $300,000) and launched like a boat into a hand-dug pit filled with water. The digging ladder could scoop out 25 buckets per-minute of earth, rock and minerals as the dredge chewed its way forward, floating on the pond it created. The excavated material was transported up the ladder and dumped into a series of screens inside the dredge.

Massive amounts of electricity were needed to operate a dredge. Long before any of the surrounding farms got electricity, a 12 mile, 23,000 volt line was strung to the dredge overland from a hydroelectric power plant.

 

Sumpter Valley Gold Dredge that created some of those tailing piles

Sumpter Valley Gold Dredge

 

 

 

 

Every rock larger than 3/4 of an inch emptied out the back of the dredge. The 96 foot "stacker" to the rear of the dredge was like a conveyor belt, carrying out the largest rocks and creating the "tailings piles" we see throughout the valley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tailings from Sumpter Valley gold dredging operations

 

 

Tailing piles like this have marred Sumpter Valley for over 50-years and will probably mar the valley for hundreds of more years.

 

 

 

According to the inscription on his gravestone, Henry H. Griffin first discovered gold in eastern Oregon.

Griffin came with other prospectors in 1861 (8-years before the transcontinental Rail Road was completed). A few miles from Sumpter in a place they still call Griffin Gulch, he hit pay dirt. Over 30,000 men flooded in to stake claims. The town of Sumpter grew a short distance away.

For 20-years, miners panned and sluiced the rivers and hillsides to bedrock. Then, a railroad built to Sumpter Valley from Baker City brought pneumatic drills and compressors. Mining shafts were sunk deep into the mountains following veins of gold in quartz. Development boomed. Mills were built, that could crush 100 tons of ore per-day.

 

Volcanoes and earthquakes are evidence that the earth's crust is constantly changing. Terribly strong and often violent, these forces created the mountains of eastern Oregon. They are also responsible for the mineral riches found here.

The shifting, thrusting earth created intense heat, which turned rock to molten form, called magma. As it pressured its way to the surface through older rock, the magma melted some minerals in the rock, forming a watery metal-rich liquid. As the magma cooled, vein-like cracks developed in the surrounding rocks. It was here in these cracks that quartz and metals, including gold, crystallized. These deposits are called "lode veins."

During the Ice Age, glaciers scoured away mountain tops exposing the veins of gold. Further erosion and gravity brought the gold tumbling down the mountain sides, eventually settling in creeks and washing out into the Sumpter Valley.

The material dredged up by the Gold Dredge including larger rocks and gravel were carried to the rear of the dredge and dumped into tailing piles by the stacker.

 

Sumpter Valley Gold Dredge

Sumpter Valley Gold Dredge

 

 

 

This is the "stacker" that carried larger rocks and gravel out and staked this useless rock into tailing piles like the one in this picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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