Gold Dredge

In the early summer of 1976, I and a handful of friends scrambled onto an old gold dredge floating in pond of water just off Tizer Road near Jefferson City, Montana.  Two of my friends jumped into the pond from the roof of the beast while the rest of us explored the giant machine.

I recalled the day we explored the dredge last night as I sat watching Gold Rush on Discovery.  Tony Beets, one of the miners featured on the program, is resurrecting a similar dredge.  His machine was originally built in 1938 and abandoned in the Alaskan gold fields after many years of operation.

Interesting thing about the local dredge we explored: my grandfather operated the brute during the era of the Great Depression.  For better or worse, he was the person responsible for the stacks of stone that might still be found along Prickly Pear Creek starting at Montana City and extending to Jefferson City.  During the 1960s he took me fishing in a few of the more remote dredge ponds he’d made amid the stacks of washed stone.

I caught trout on every cast.

Grandfather said that he saw a few nuggets the size of the end of his thumb cross through his machine.

The dredge sat rusting in the pond off Tizer Road for forty-some years.  Then, in the 1980’s, the behemoth was dismantled and shipped down to Brazil for reassembly and release into a frenzied gold rush taking place there.

That pleased my Grandfather.

He passed not long after.

I had an instamatic camera with me on that day in 1976 when we explored the dredge.  I snapped a photo of my friends jumping into the water.  One of the jumpers died only a year or so later.   I am pictured high on the stacker in the photo to the upper right.

I wonder if part of my grandfather remains churning away in Brazil.

--Mitchell Hegman