Gold Dredge No. 8
 If you would like to take a little bit of Alaska gold fever back with you to
show your friends, we recommend taking a tour through Gold Dredge No. 8.
This was an actual working dredge that carved through Goldstream Valley
from 1928 until 1959. Your entry
fee includes a short film explaining the process used to prepare the Valley for
the dredge, a guided tour through the actual dredge that was used, and a lesson
on how to pan for gold. You can
choose whether you would like to pay a bit more to pan a “poke” of dirt that
has “guaranteed gold”. You can
also pay to eat lunch at the facility’s mess hall.
You are allowed to stay and pan the tailings all day.
Once you find all the “color” you want, take into the assay office
and gift shop where they will weight it and tell you the value of your gold.
Of course they will also make into a piece of jewelry for you if you like.
Many people have the few flakes of gold that they "panned" put into a
small amulet to be worn on a chain. They are quite attractive and fun to
show friends back home.
To find Gold Dredge No. 8, head north out of Fairbanks on
the Steese Expressway. Turn left on
Goldstream Road, and then take another left on the old Steese highway.
Find the dredge about one third of a mile on the right side of the road.
If this is your first time panning for gold, we recommend
you go ahead and buy the poke and use it to learn how to pan properly.
Panning is relatively easy, but it can be frustrating if you try several
times without success. When you realize how heavy gold is, and how to properly shake
it to the bottom of the pan, the process can be very exciting.
The tour including a poke with guaranteed gold costs $20.00 for adults and
$13.00 per child. The price for entrance can be less if you do not wish to
get the pouch of dirt with guaranteed gold, and can be more if you purchase
lunch with the tour.
The largest nugget I found came from the tailing piles they
let us pan for the rest of the day. Not
much bigger than a broken pencil lead, it was still a fairly exciting find.
Many shovels full of the tailings produced no gold, but a few of them
did. There are small pieces of gold in the tailings but it is too
expensive for a commercial operation to extract, however, shovels full of the
tailings provide thrills for people
learning how to pan.
Claimjumper discovered a method for finding gold in just
about every pan full of dirt. She
noticed that each time she scraped her pan along the bottom of the water troughs
and panned the dirt, there were several pieces of gold that other people had
lost when learning. We panned for
an hour or two as several busloads of tourists came, panned and then left.
(The place is owned by Holland America Line-Westours.) Hundreds of people
were coming through, and probably many of them dropped a few pieces of gold out
of the guaranteed gold pokes as they tried to learn the proper panning
techniques. Be warned, this
activity is very addictive. Gold
fever is easy to catch. We enjoyed
this place because we could stay as long as we wanted and experience the feeling
and magic of the gold rush era.
For contact information on Gold Dredge #8, click
here.
Last Visited: July 1999
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