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Gold Dredging At Stetson Creek, Alaska


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1979-5-inch-dredge-stetson.jpg

This one sure brings back nice memories! My old Keene 5" dredge parked on lower Stetson Creek on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska in 1979. The first of many years dredging on this creek and on Cooper Creek, which Stetson feeds into. This was one of my more pleasant summers of dredging. The weather was nice, the water was low, the gold was good. This location was giving up about an ounce a day, better than the average on Stetson Creek. Mainly because of plentiful shallow bedrock. The gold is almost all on bedrock in Stetson Creek with little or nothing in the overburden. The more overburden you process, the less gold you get overall as a rule. This is because Stetson Creek is a classic gulch deposit, a very steep creek with waterfall after waterfall. Mother nature's giant sluice box, and the gold has been well settled and concentrated. The paystreaks were small and very well defined, move over just a foot and it was like crossing a line, you were in the gold and now you are out. There were large stretches of creek with smooth bedrock and so little gold you would think there was none in the creek if you got into one of those sections.

The gold was nice - lots of jewelry gold buy nothing really big. The two pennyweight nugget in the photo was about as large as I ever found in years of mining, though the records report a three ounce nugget having been found on the creek. Must of been a fluke from what I saw, if it even happened at all.

1980-stetson-creek-alaska-gold.jpg

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Keep up the good stories Steve. I just read your last article in ICMJ mag, good job on that. I hadn't seen that chart before. There is still gold on the Kenai but getting to be more work. I agree with minerdude, makes me want to go dredging. However this time of year I would probably change my mind before I dig my dredge out of the snow, Bob

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  • 1 month later...

Steve great pics of Stetson flowing - 5 more months before it won't be flowing anymore pretty sad. Drove to the end of their new road last sept. I would love to have some more pics of Stetson if anyone has any. I have lots dating back to 1955.

Thanks in advance

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  • 2 months later...
On 1/15/2014 at 2:46 PM, Bob(AK) said:

Keep up the good stories Steve. I just read your last article in ICMJ mag, good job on that. I hadn't seen that chart before. There is still gold on the Kenai but getting to be more work. I agree with minerdude, makes me want to go dredging. However this time of year I would probably change my mind before I dig my dredge out of the snow, Bob

Here is a copy of the chart for those wondering about it. It gives a rough idea of where the gold is on the Kenai Peninsula. Click for larger version.

placer-gold-production-kenai-peninsula-alaska.jpg

And here is another photo from Stetson Creek, 1979 - 5" dredge in operation.

steve-herschbach-gold-dredging-stetson-creek-alaska-5-inch-dredge-1979.jpg

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