7.The third Chatanika Gold Dredge
Location: Alaska’s Fairbanks North Star
Calendar year: 1923
Total value: $70 million (1923–1957)
You can travel 25 miles out of Fairbanks on the former Steese Highway to reach this historic gold mining site in Alaska. In the early 1920s, Chatanika Gold Dredge #3 was founded as a mining business. Roughly seventy million dollars’ worth of solid gold was taken out of the dredge over thirty years.
Gold Dredge #3 in Chatanika, Alaska (@atlasobscura/Pinterest)
Ten thousand people lived in the mining camp at one point, which is paradoxically even more than the whole population of Fairbanks. From the 1960s until 1997, the Dredge was owned by a new historian who decided to preserve Alaskan history by leaving the equipment in its original condition. Despite fire damage to the steel framework and equipment in 2013 and 2016, Dredge #3 is still largely intact.
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