Sumpter Valley Dredge Kiosk - Oregon Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Sumpter Valley Dredge Kiosk with four history signs.

Marker Name 1: Welcome to Sumpter Valley Dredge
Marker Text 1: Look around you. Here’s this monstrous dredge sitting idle. Nearby, an old railroad track. Out beyond there is farmland, open range, meandering rivers, rugged mountains, and sky. Quiet, natural beauty.
These places were here when the gold seekers arrived. Splashing around in a tributary of the Powder River, they found what they came for . . . gold.
For about 100 years, the glint of gold drew many thousands of people to this valley. Sumpter became a boom town almost overnight. There were more than 90 businesses - newspapers, stagecoach lines, blacksmiths, hotels, brothels, saw mills, churches, assayers, banks, schools and more. And parades on the Fourth of July.
At times the streets were hot and dusty. Sometimes they were chest-deep in snow. But the bustling economy seemed to produce most of what the 4,000 residents wanted. Until the town burned down. And it got too expensive to mine for what gold remains.

Marker Name 2: Making the Mother Lode
Marker Text 2: Volcanoes, earthquakes and glaciers are evidence that the earth’s crust is constantly changing. Terribly strong and often violent, these forces created the mountains of eastern Oregon. They’re also responsible for the mineral riches found here.
The shifting, thrusting earth created intense heat, which turned rock to molten form, called magma. As it pressured its way to the surface through older rock, the magma melted some minerals in the rock, forming a watery metal-rich liquid. As the magma cooled, vein-like cracks developed in the surrounding rocks. It was here in these cracks that quartz and metals, including gold, crystalized. These deposits are called “lode veins.”
During the Pleistocene era, which included the Ice Age, glaciers inched their way south across North America, souring away mountain tops and exposing the veins of gold. Further erosion and gravity brought the gold tumbling down the mountain sides, eventually settling in creeks (Cracker Creek) and washing out into the Sumpter Valley.

Marker Name 3: Three Waves of Gold Mining
Marker Text 3: According to the inscription on his gravestone, Henry H. Griffin first discovered gold in easter Oregon.
Griffin came with other prospectors in 1861. A few miles from here, in a place they still call Griffin Gulch, he hit pay dirt. Over 30,000 men flooded in to stake claims. The town of Sumpter grew a short distance away.
For 20 years, miners panned and sluiced the rivers and hillsides to bedrock. Then, a railroad built to Sumpter Valley from Baker City brought pneumatic drills and compressors. Mining shafts were sunk deep into the mountains. Development boomed. Smelters were built, the largest of which could crush 100 tons of ore per day.
The value of gold mined in the Sumpter area between 1870 and 1915 is estimated at $16 million.
Three dredges worked the valley from 1913 to 1954, after placer and lode mining had become unprofitable. This dredge (Sumpter #3) was launched in 1935, built substantially from parts of the first dredge, which had been idle for 10 years.
Between them, the dredges traveled more than 8 miles, extracting $10 to $12 million worth of gold. Still, it cost more to run than the gold could pay for. The last dredge closed in 1954, more than $100,000 in debt.

Marker Name 4: Digging for Gold in a Big Way
Marker Text 4: A dredge is basically a giant shovel mounted on the deck of a boat. Instead of one bucket, this dredge had 72, each weighing as much as a car (a ton). The assembly of buckets is called the digging ladder.
This dredge was built on dry land (for about $300,000) and launched like a boat into a hand-dug pit filled with water. The digging ladder could scoop out 25 buckets per minute of earth, rock and minerals as the dredge chewed its way forward, floating on the pond it created. The excavated material was transported up the ladder and dumped into a series of screens inside the dredge.
Massive amounts of electricity were needed to operate a dredge. Long before any of the surrounding farms got electricity, a 12 mile, 23,000 volt line was strung to the dredge overland from a hydroelectric power plant.
Everything larger than 3/4 of an inch emptied out the back of the dredge. The 96 foot “stacker” to the rear of the dredge was like a conveyor belt, carrying out the larges rocks and creating the “tailings” you see.

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