Alaska Gold 

After growing up in Wyoming and working the oil patches in the very early 1970's, I can just imagine the bar fights they must have had in the bars in Alaska during the early gold mining days. When those iron tough miners hit the bars to blow off steam, I can just imagine that some of those bar fights and the men in them are legendary in those areas! It has never ceased to amaze me how tough the human body can become when it is used and abused to the max over a lifetime! People nowadays don't have a clue how hard man has worked in the past to get to where we are today.

That was excellent film of gold history in Alaska

Such a cool old video, thanks for sharing!!!

This is my favourite film on RU-vid ! Thank you for sharing it!

Lived in Fairbanks in 1967-68. The 'A/'67 Fair showed a lot of mining equipment and there was a huge dredge so it was great to see this film and to actually understand, finally, how gold was taken from the ground. Thank you so much for posting. Earthquake and Chena River Flood also when I was there. Made me a 'sourdough' real fast. Loved my time up there-thx again!

What an incredible learning film

WOW the amount of work they did just to get to the gold! Im stunned

Very interesting - so grateful that someone filmed this invaluable part of history - I didn't realize that mercury was used on dredges. Amazing when we think that gold was prized even at $35 dollars/ounce. The old prospectors are rolling over in their graves with today's prices (even adjusted for inflation)!

thank you so much for the amazing history of this video. i was so high i didnt realize that this video was literally 70 years old wow just wow

That was a good film..Always saw this dredge on gold fever with Tom Massie..Cool to see the history of it..

Very interesting, A treasure of video history. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Wish we had interviews with some of the old miners.

Yes, such a cool video!!Thank You!!

A fantastic film!

Wonderful documentary.

I drive by everything in this video every summer on my way to my mining site. You can still see the giant bucket line dredge and sections of the Davidson Ditch pipeline from the road. Take an ATV and head into the bush and you’ll find massive equipment abandoned in the middle of nowhere. It’s a fun area to explore. And to this day it’s a good area for gold. Which is why I head up there every summer to do some mining.😀

Thank you for putting up this very interesting video. These are mostly things that I won't see where I live (Malaysia). It creates appreciation of inventors and also those tough people who worked in often very difficult conditions.

thanks for the video, it was very interesting.

Ron Clark did a great narration

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO

I'm sure glad I found your podcast really miss those shows of the Yukon with all you guys really good to see everybody's doing okay may God look after all of you

You know watching kids today work it's very sad!..Not all,but the most have gotten taught in School that they don't have to work hard to win,and not what the real world is like..I'm only 44 and I was fortunate to have the father I did,and made sure work ethics were implanted into me,and I was 12 years old working on lakes with the wind blasting you being it was open for miles,picking fish out of nets when your fingers and hands lost feeling cause the ice cold water,and still kept going cause I know the job had to get done,and if I stop it only holds it up being that it was a must,and had to keep in mind the longer it took,then the bigger the chance the holes would freeze back over and would be picking the ice back open to get the nets back into the water to catch more fish!..When I was of age school was done,I worked in a lumber/plywood mill working my ass off so I wasn't that person that others talked about how lazy they are,and knew I had to do what I had to do to get it done,and feel good about myself being looked at as who I was and that is a hard working kid!..I would be dripping sweat so bad I couldn't see from the sweat dripping into my eyes,but only thought ok I remember what exactly was in front of me so I didn't have to stop till it was done!..lol..I had high ranking bosses actually coming up to me and telling me to keep it up and I will be going places with the Company..Idk if a kid knows how good that feels to have a high ranked boss come up to you and tell you that and the high you get from that ..It would have killed me to have my boss say you need to work harder,or be watching me cause I just do the bare minimum,and the boss look at me with a look like he wants to tell you to go home and not come back!..How did we allow in such a short time period allow these future builders,investors,head held high goal seekers to be taken in a new direction by the ones we should be able to trust take it away from our children,and not have put a stop to it when they proposed the Nobody losses,everyone is a winner crap!..We have kids today that think they shouldn't have to pay their way like we did,and know you will not win unless you work your ass off and win,but most likely loose,and allow that to hit them hard and know they will have to work harder and harder till they do win!..Now they have a ribbon for not winning!..My daughter that's 12 said it's a insult to students who get that..Not only they feel they lost, but now they want to make that kid feel like the person that got first is no better..Well yeah they probably worked on it to be better and hard,so why knock their hard work?..lol..Well before my comm

Touching that almaga all day....amazing doc

Break up in any small town with a large river running thru it is still breathtaking to this day from one side of the country to the other

Awsome Awsome history documentary ... at its finest. Miners today could learn alot here no doubt .

Wow ..! Thank you for sharing

Awesome video

this is the best ever film on dredging and old time solutions like how to thaw... the same problem miners face today...

interesting film makes us realise what an easy life we now live

Very interesting, nice video.

Super cool old vid! Nice stuff

Great video!!!

Amazing engineering and ingenuity for the time. Seems like huge investments were made with no guarantee on return and left the land scared for milliniums. Good food,clean water, and a place to lay your head. What else is really needed?

Gob smacked. What they could do way back then. Very inventive - every step of the way :)

3.5 million ounces. that is impressive

Great video. Thanks for sharing. I subbed to your channel.

Would be great if these machines start up again but of course everybody would want a piece of the pie

As hard and as fast as these men are working, this video reminds me of Richard "Dick" Proenneke and his Alaskan adventure film "Alone in the Wilderness."

Wow what an insight

I've had the privilege of working on a number of the old USSR&M Co. properties in the Fairbanks and Nome mining districts since 1987. About half of the dredges are still located on the claims. The big dragline is still sitting near Ester, nearly obscured by vegetation. The Alaska Gold Co. (descendant of USSR&M Co.) was still running two of these dredges in Nome in 1993, as well as the big gangs of "thaw monkeys" working the cold water thaw points.

Amazing..

cool dragline footage

It would be AWESOME if KUAC could find and develop a story of the dredge move on skids from near Ester over the hills to a rich valley a few miles distant. As I recall, about 15 D8's towed the dredge sans bucket line and tailings conveyor with 3 ripper equipped D9's as the brakes for the downhill parts of the trip. Probably mid to late 50's.

Gotta luv tha old day's and way's of life

Why does everyone say bad things about the Beets family if you know the story about this unbelievable family Tony Beets he's a hero to so many he has been supplying people jobs for a long long time I don't know maybe its jealousy lol I know for a fact that it's jealousy this man came with the tiniest amount of money and a extremely young wife with a dream and I'm pretty sure he was very scared but he earned his money nobody gave him a penny and man I have to really admire that he is100 % MAN must be a awesome guy because all of his children work for his company and that's really impressive thumbs up Tony

i see a large dredge floating on the river, collecting sand for masonry stuff, it dumps it on a barge and gets unloaded by crane, the strong current keeps new sand flowing in, so it never moves very far

The dredge near Chatanika Lodge has since been burned leaving a hulking iron mess. Still it resembles the dredge it once was but not as well.

I miss Alaska an Anchorage The people were cool as hell

...still people working that hard in Alaska...I would much rather watch from here the central coast of California. I have yet to put snow chains on anything...Thank you for posting...A.C.Feuerhelm

It’s sad that all these hard workers are long gone.

They have a marble Masonic building in Fairbanks is Amazing

Inner Alaska, Yukon Canada 🇨🇦 🌵 has

@11:24 could you imagine welding that bucket? I would imagine rod the to be 7/16'. At least ⅜.

Inner 🇨🇦 Alaska, Yukon Canada 🌵 has arctic cactaé that seals eat, whales swim up and gold like ⚖

🌵Inner Alaska, Yukon Canada 🦌 🇨🇦 has arctic cactaé that seals eat, whales swim up on pretty glaciers glossy eye's, and gold like ⚖

The roads around Fairbanks are the best in AK .

The old timers had to really work hard to get the shiny

I always wondered if there was a 10,000 cubic foot thick piece of gold could ever be found somewhere

I only buy :| All about saving thee venues.

was nome beach special, or there are more beaches like nome in there ???

23:15 I wonder if that winch drum would pass MSHA muster today. The average lifetime of an operator's left hand must have been expressed in days rather than years.

There was peace then Tony Beets turns up to moved the dredge.

I love the calming elevator music at 26 minutes in, as they shovel hand fulls of mercury/gold amalgam into the retort, with absolutely no protection

@26:15 “Gloves? We don’t need no stinking gloves...”

Pretty sure Tony Beets got that same ole dredge up and running again.

Very interesting! I always wonder what the men working those long hours dreamt of with their salaries.

I wonder how much arsenic you have put in the serene pond as you call it

handling mercury with bare hands. must have been a lot of cancer and mental craziness.

Work for the fe company 1980-83 wood cutter hog river . The Boss was Dan Egan his son was there ,after is father died he took over, Pete Egan.I work on the dredge a little bit. grue up in machine shops back east.what i like was i worked on a tourniquet lathe for the crossman arms company back in the 70s. The floor next to the fe machine shop lathe had 4by4 wood floor .A water pump shaft if you drop it ?

Is that Tony Beets dredge

Thankfully , Miner's Moss has taken the place of the amalgam processes :)

don't tell tony beats about this machine

ecologic damage was minor. that's a good one

I love Yukon God Potatoes.

Trust me if this thing was running you wouldn't be able to hear the sound of boots on the deck.

Why does it sound like Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson) is narrating this?

find hott spoots add green plates

gold!!!

What did he say about the miner supporting his shaft?

atach too a green glowing block

The yellow stones make the paleface crazy !

is that Dredge for sale??

they certainly worked for their money in those day's.

Kinda wish it was in black and white

Noice!

majic fluxxx thunder

So this guy with the paddle is working with mercury?

Theres gold in them thar hills .aviators are the miners .what a gravy train . like hippies thete all flying .get cert...

Imagine, only 125 million dollar in all those years...

And I learned ice is expensive in Alaska.

I still can't believe they used mercury in that to extract the gold

The poor guys thAt handled the merry

And all that gold supplied by the sun going nova every 12,500 years

🤝🌹

The narrator sounds a lot like Nick Offerman.

Are they saying that they didn’t poison the environment by using mercury.

Liquid Mercury men playing with there mercury

That's a fine screen 🤔trichomes ?😅

Wow greed has killed Alaska

Is this the voice? You,,,,, voice.

At what it was sold for, from those days till now is in the billions, close as I could figure on paper a difference of sixteen billion dollars worth. Oddly our current world debt climbs and the amount of gold in reserves that someone made off with cause the gold was never used. I really don't understand why such a defacett in price as we import more than we export and our peoples hands are tied and it never gets better. I wouldn't want the job of president