This is a great place to spend some time exploring the history of a locality as well simply enjoying some great scenery. When I visited,the self guided path even took you into the engine room of the dredge. Interpretive signs guide you along the path and provide detailed information about the geology, history, and mining methods of the period. At my last visit way back in 2010, the dredge was open to self guided tours. The oversize gravels were then discarded and the remaining concentrates were further separated in the sluice boxes.Ĭurrently, the dredge resides at Sumpter Valley State Park, Oregon, USA. Inside the dredge,the high GPM rate of waterflow was used to wash the gravel that the buckets had brought up from the alluvial deposits. Today, miles of gravel tailings trace the route of mining along the drainage. Tailings were deposited to the rear of the dredge. As the dredge ate its way through old alluvial deposits the water would fill the empty void, creating new channels that would continue to float the dredge. A series of dams and excavations would typically divert water from the flowing river and create a channel sufficient to float the dredge. The bucket line dredge took this concept to the extreme. Gold, would later extracted from the resulting concentrate. In sluice box mining, alluvial gravels are shoveled by hand into a box containing ridges that would allow for the larger gravels and heavier gold to be caught while the lighter material would be washed away by the constant stream of flowing water. The dredge, built in 1935 at the cost of around $350,000 dollars, operated until 1954 and recovered upwards of 4.5 million in gold calculated at the valuation of $35 per ounce.ĭredging, is a mining method that is basically a portable sluice box on a gigantic scale. This bucket line dredge was the culmination of the results of this exodus of miners from the California gold fields. Gold was discovered in 1862 in the drainage's of the Powder River and veteran miners from the 1848 California Gold Rush went to NE Oregon in pursuit of the new discovery. Sumpter Valley State Park is the current home of this bucket line dredge that was used to mine gold in the Sumpter Valley from approximately 1935 -1954.
Current population, 181 (2019 United States Census Bureau Survey), is nearby to Sumpter Valley Dredge Oregon State Park. The tiny town of Sumpter, Baker Co., Oregon, USA.
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