Just learned something wild about the old dredge at Silverton

I was reading a local history book about Colorado mining and it said the dredge there processed over 50 million cubic yards of gravel. That's a crazy amount of material for a machine built in the 1920s. It ran for almost 30 years straight before they shut it down. Makes you think about the scale of work those old crews handled without any of our modern tech. Anyone know of other historic dredges with stats that blow your mind?

3 comments

3 Comments

dianagreen2mo ago

50 million cubic yards is an insane number to wrap your head around. Those crews must have been built different.

julia_jones722mo ago

My friend's grandpa moved dirt like that, @dianagreen, and his stories were wild.

elizabeth_bailey265d ago

That 50 million cubic yard number gets me thinking about the environmental side nobody mentions. The dredge at Silverton basically turned miles of river bottom inside out, leaving those big piles of tailings you can still see today. My grandpa worked on a smaller dredge up in Montana back in the 50s and he said they'd just walk away from the mess when they were done. They didn't think about what happened to the fish or the water supply downstream because that stuff wasn't on anyone's radar back then. It's crazy to think how much mercury they probably lost into that river too since it was the standard way to separate gold back then. So while the machine itself is impressive, the real story might be what we're still dealing with from all that gravel processing.