What is a Dry Land Dredge Circa 1910-1940?

[tvanwho]

I keep running into the term Dry Land Gold Dredge as used in desert placers in Arizona from roughly 1900-1945 era.  Does anybody have any info or pictures of this machine and how it worked?

Thanks.

 

-Tom,ps, can't seem to find any info online..except Chuck Lassiters Hyroforce nozzle

[Steve Herschbach]

From Placer Examination - Principles and Practice Technical Bulletin 4 Bureau of Land Management 1969

DRYLAND DREDGE A mechanical washing plant, sometimes of appreciable size, designed to follow a dragline, or other excavator, as the mining cut advances. Some are equipped with trommel-type revolving screens and rock stackers, and are mounted on crawler-type tracks.

In other words a mobile washplant.

[tvanwho]

thanks Steve

 

Ps,Where do you get enough water in a dry hot desert to run a wash plant? The only water sources seem to be the occasional mountain springs or these Tinnaja water tank things on the topo maps?

  I was out in the desert once, north of Pleasant Lake north of Phoenix , with a prospecting buddy on a hot day in June to gold hunt. We stopped at a spot on the 4wd trail that had lush greenery showing. Off to one side, there were long skinny iron pipes coming down from higher up the hillside. I am assuming water from a spring? Maybe for a placer operation in the wash below the 4wd road? Might be a good clue to old placer workings in an area to watch for?

 And in a spot on the Agua Fria river south of the ghost town of Gillette,  I spotted what looked like a large TV antenna perched on a hillside boulder beside the river crossing? Duh,what was that ? Is somebody living underground there? There was a ventilator pipe sticking out of the rocks nearby  too now that I recall.You never know what you will see driving backroads in the search for gold...