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After the initial rush of 1898, gold mining in the Klondike settled down to an organized, corporate undertaking. This era, which extended up to the Second World War, was characterized by the use of gigantic floating dredges.

Each dredge was a self-contained factory for processing the alluvial gravels that filled the valleys of the Klondike River, Bonanza Creek, and a few smaller areas. The dredge floated in a pond of its own making. Gravel was scooped in the front, extending the pond, processed to remove gold nuggets, then carried out the back on a long conveyor belt and dumped, filling in the pond behind. As it progressed the dredge swung slowly side-to-side, thus cutting a swathe wider than itself.

The methodically stacked boulders and gravel form an interesting landscape of corrugated ridges, running back and forth across the valleys. Ponds fill the depressions between rows, and vegetation is beginning to esablish footholds here and there, though the crests of the ridges are as bare and lifeless as the day the tailings were piled up.

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Next: Claim 33