Alaska Gold
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- Originally a silent film by the U.S. Smelting and Mining Co. from 1949, KUAC added a sound track and narration to explain the process and history of mining gold in Alaska's rugged conditions. ©KUAC, 1981
DVD's of this program are available for purchase at www.kuac.org.
After growing up in Wyoming and working the oil patches in the very early 1970's, I can just imagine the bar fights they must have had in the bars in Alaska during the early gold mining days. When those iron tough miners hit the bars to blow off steam, I can just imagine that some of those bar fights and the men in them are legendary in those areas! It has never ceased to amaze me how tough the human body can become when it is used and abused to the max over a lifetime! People nowadays don't have a clue how hard man has worked in the past to get to where we are today.
I'm guessing that they were too tired to fight.
That is a Hollywood depiction.
I’m 77 yrs. old trust me it’s amazing just how much aman can endure when needed, how many of you could say, you feel capable of building a log home from scratch in the wilderness, I have , and raised my family with game and our garden, trapping and hunting and fishing become chores when done daily thru each their seasons, not to mention the always and ever present task of keeping ahead of the need for firewood for both heat and the cookstove year round, body is now hard put to comply to any of the brains commands, but I wouldn’t trade the life I lived with anyone, it’s been an AWSOME Journey!
@@robertrousseau6920 what town or area were you in when you did all that? Where are you now? Thanks
There is much merit in ‘working hard’. Though Working Smart, the owners of this machine And Company, And Working hard is where the Real wealth/money is at.
That was excellent film of gold history in Alaska
Very interesting - so grateful that someone filmed this invaluable part of history - I didn't realize that mercury was used on dredges. Amazing when we think that gold was prized even at $35 dollars/ounce. The old prospectors are rolling over in their graves with today's prices (even adjusted for inflation)!
Great farm land back in the day sold for $150/acre compared with 10 thousand dollars an acre today.
So 5.7 ounces of gold buys good farm land today.
While 4.3 ounces of gold bought good farm land back then.
If your just gonna spend it on food or electronics today is a better time for gold, but if you actually want to invest it back then was a better time.
You know watching kids today work it's very sad!..Not all,but the most have gotten taught in School that they don't have to work hard to win,and not what the real world is like..I'm only 44 and I was fortunate to have the father I did,and made sure work ethics were implanted into me,and I was 12 years old working on lakes with the wind blasting you being it was open for miles,picking fish out of nets when your fingers and hands lost feeling cause the ice cold water,and still kept going cause I know the job had to get done,and if I stop it only holds it up being that it was a must,and had to keep in mind the longer it took,then the bigger the chance the holes would freeze back over and would be picking the ice back open to get the nets back into the water to catch more fish!..When I was of age school was done,I worked in a lumber/plywood mill working my ass off so I wasn't that person that others talked about how lazy they are,and knew I had to do what I had to do to get it done,and feel good about myself being looked at as who I was and that is a hard working kid!..I would be dripping sweat so bad I couldn't see from the sweat dripping into my eyes,but only thought ok I remember what exactly was in front of me so I didn't have to stop till it was done!..lol..I had high ranking bosses actually coming up to me and telling me to keep it up and I will be going places with the Company..Idk if a kid knows how good that feels to have a high ranked boss come up to you and tell you that and the high you get from that ..It would have killed me to have my boss say you need to work harder,or be watching me cause I just do the bare minimum,and the boss look at me with a look like he wants to tell you to go home and not come back!..How did we allow in such a short time period allow these future builders,investors,head held high goal seekers to be taken in a new direction by the ones we should be able to trust take it away from our children,and not have put a stop to it when they proposed the Nobody losses,everyone is a winner crap!..We have kids today that think they shouldn't have to pay their way like we did,and know you will not win unless you work your ass off and win,but most likely loose,and allow that to hit them hard and know they will have to work harder and harder till they do win!..Now they have a ribbon for not winning!..My daughter that's 12 said it's a insult to students who get that..Not only they feel they lost, but now they want to make that kid feel like the person that got first is no better..Well yeah they probably worked on it to be better and hard,so why knock their hard work?..lol..Well before my comm
Comment gets published I meant to say I will wrap it up.lol
Ha! I've been busting my ass on Maine lobster boats since i was 10 years old. 45 years later.
Lived in Fairbanks in 1967-68. The 'A/'67 Fair showed a lot of mining equipment and there was a huge dredge so it was great to see this film and to actually understand, finally, how gold was taken from the ground. Thank you so much for posting. Earthquake and Chena River Flood also when I was there. Made me a 'sourdough' real fast. Loved my time up there-thx again!
Ron Clark did a great narration
That was a good film..Always saw this dredge on gold fever with Tom Massie..Cool to see the history of it..
I drive by everything in this video every summer on my way to my mining site. You can still see the giant bucket line dredge and sections of the Davidson Ditch pipeline from the road. Take an ATV and head into the bush and you’ll find massive equipment abandoned in the middle of nowhere. It’s a fun area to explore. And to this day it’s a good area for gold. Which is why I head up there every summer to do some mining.😀
thank you so much for the amazing history of this video. i was so high i didnt realize that this video was literally 70 years old wow just wow
You prove 100% why hard work is a swear word to most now..
Awesome video
Very interesting, A treasure of video history.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you.
Wish we had interviews with some of the old miners.
WOW the amount of work they did just to get to the gold! Im stunned
Break up in any small town with a large river running thru it is still breathtaking to this day from one side of the country to the other
Such a cool old video, thanks for sharing!!!
Amazing engineering and ingenuity for the time. Seems like huge investments were made with no guarantee on return and left the land scared for milliniums. Good food,clean water, and a place to lay your head. What else is really needed?
thanks for the video, it was very interesting.
What an incredible learning film
A fantastic film!
Yes, such a cool video!!Thank You!!
THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO
Wonderful documentary.
This is my favourite film on TH-cam ! Thank you for sharing it!
It reminds me quite a bit of “Alone In The Wilderness,” about Dick Proenneke. It’s a legend, they replay it all the time on PBS.
Very interesting, nice video.
3.5 million ounces. that is impressive
Great video!!!
Touching that almaga all day....amazing doc
cancer !!
interesting film makes us realise what an easy life we now live
this is the best ever film on dredging and old time solutions like how to thaw... the same problem miners face today...
Super cool old vid! Nice stuff
Thank you for putting up this very interesting video. These are mostly things that I won't see where I live (Malaysia). It creates appreciation of inventors and also those tough people who worked in often very difficult conditions.
Ahmad look to Mongolia for dredges like these working today.
I'm sure glad I found your podcast really miss those shows of the Yukon with all you guys really good to see everybody's doing okay may God look after all of you
Wow ..! Thank you for sharing
Would be great if these machines start up again but of course everybody would want a piece of the pie
Awsome Awsome history documentary ... at its finest. Miners today could learn alot here no doubt .
Great video. Thanks for sharing. I subbed to your channel.
Gob smacked. What they could do way back then. Very inventive - every step of the way :)
As hard and as fast as these men are working, this video reminds me of Richard "Dick" Proenneke and his Alaskan adventure film "Alone in the Wilderness."
Kevin McKinney I’m fortunate to have cabins on Lake Clark and I’ve always been impressed with the life Dick created for himself and how he preserved his “Alaska” for all of us. My in-laws knew him well and he’d stop by and visit on his trips to Port Alsworth. He made my mother-in-law one of his famous handmade spoons. I fly by occasionally hoping to catch him waving at the cabin door. Good friend of mine flew by one day and he had stomped out “Help” in the snow. Nothing was wrong, he just got lonely. Read the books by John Branson about him. Many more stories.
cool dragline footage
Amazing..
Wow what an insight
It would be AWESOME if KUAC could find and develop a story of the dredge move on skids from near Ester over the hills to a rich valley a few miles distant. As I recall, about 15 D8's towed the dredge sans bucket line and tailings conveyor with 3 ripper equipped D9's as the brakes for the downhill parts of the trip. Probably mid to late 50's.
Why does everyone say bad things about the Beets family if you know the story about this unbelievable family Tony Beets he's a hero to so many he has been supplying people jobs for a long long time I don't know maybe its jealousy lol I know for a fact that it's jealousy this man came with the tiniest amount of money and a extremely young wife with a dream and I'm pretty sure he was very scared but he earned his money nobody gave him a penny and man I have to really admire that he is100 % MAN must be a awesome guy because all of his children work for his company and that's really impressive thumbs up Tony
@Mark Hepworth I don't know about that I was born and raised in the USA and not one person out of the 100 or so people I know are good people who help anyone and color doesn't matter at all or where you come from not all in the united states are bad people plus just like everywhere in the world people are mostly good it's government that messed up good day y'all
Gotta luv tha old day's and way's of life
i see a large dredge floating on the river, collecting sand for masonry stuff, it dumps it on a barge and gets unloaded by crane, the strong current keeps new sand flowing in, so it never moves very far
The old timers had to really work hard to get the shiny
Pretty sure Tony Beets got that same ole dredge up and running again.
I wonder how much arsenic you have put in the serene pond as you call it
was nome beach special, or there are more beaches like nome in there ???
The dredge near Chatanika Lodge has since been burned leaving a hulking iron mess. Still it resembles the dredge it once was but not as well.
I've had the privilege of working on a number of the old USSR&M Co. properties in the Fairbanks and Nome mining districts since 1987. About half of the dredges are still located on the claims. The big dragline is still sitting near Ester, nearly obscured by vegetation. The Alaska Gold Co. (descendant of USSR&M Co.) was still running two of these dredges in Nome in 1993, as well as the big gangs of "thaw monkeys" working the cold water thaw points.
I was on dredge #5 in the 80's and #6 in the 90's before Alaska Gold Co went into open pit mining in 1993.
Is that Tony Beets dredge
...still people working that hard in Alaska...I would much rather watch from here the central coast of California. I have yet to put snow chains on anything...Thank you for posting...A.C.Feuerhelm
It’s sad that all these hard workers are long gone.
I always wondered if there was a 10,000 cubic foot thick piece of gold could ever be found somewhere
Outer space, there are solid gold meteorites out there O.O
Work for the fe company 1980-83 wood cutter hog river . The Boss was Dan Egan his son was there ,after is father died
he took over, Pete Egan.I work on the dredge a little bit. grue up in machine shops back east.what i like was i worked on a tourniquet lathe for the crossman arms company back in the 70s. The floor next to the fe machine shop lathe had 4by4 wood floor .A water pump shaft if you drop it ?
@26:15 “Gloves? We don’t need no stinking gloves...”
There was peace then Tony Beets turns up to moved the dredge.
@11:24 could you imagine welding that bucket? I would imagine rod the to be 7/16'. At least ⅜.
They have a marble
Masonic building in
Fairbanks is Amazing
23:15 I wonder if that winch drum would pass MSHA muster today. The average lifetime of an operator's left hand must have been expressed in days rather than years.
If that was today then yes,but back then they were men,not lazy and weak ass people!..They didn't know pain back then cause they didn't feel it.Today the boys we have working are fragile little kittens,trying to act like men!..I hope you understand my comment as a fact and not a dig
@@SuperGordont Don't blame the boys. Technology makes us soft these days... People just need to try to get more exercise because you don't get the same amount from daily life as it was before
Can you imagine a cable snapping next to the reel? Those operators would be sliced up like a whip through warm butter!
A gentleman by the name of Rex Fisher was researching records of mining deaths in the first half of the 20th century in the Fairbanks mining district. Although his research was completed, the book has not yet been published. Alaska Press has had better days.
Anyway, while probably not complete, employers weren't to interested in reporting work related deaths, it does paint a fairly grim picture. As I recall, a major source for Mr. Fisher's research was the News Miner Obituary.
Very interesting! I always wonder what the men working those long hours dreamt of with their salaries.
Why does it sound like Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson) is narrating this?
The roads around Fairbanks are the best in AK .
Fr
Inner Alaska, Yukon Canada 🇨🇦 🌵 has
I do not enjoy little toddler syndrome ship yacht's🌵 prostitutes semen in Your electronic devices
🌵insurance&claim Co.
Inspection&International Border&coffee Co.
take a rest 🌵
is that Dredge for sale??
Shane Gulasi : I live just a few miles away from there anyway the answer to your question is not at this time its kinda like a theme park you go there and ride a train to get back in there to it they have tables you can set at if you want you can join in on the fun of panning a little bag of dirt that they give you and still today everyone gets gold from there bag they also have novelties they sale.
ecologic damage was minor. that's a good one
yes until years latter when all the fish and animals had died and the land was barren and polluted with mercury and poisons all the gold had been mined
It is true,compared to the damage we have done even in the last 10 years Makes what they did look like someone pissed in a River..Today's human really have zero to criticize what they did back then..They did it not knowing the damage,to themselves,and the environment!..We do it fully knowing what damage is being done,and government gives them a permit to double down..The worst polluters today get fines,isn't that the government saying and showing us they won't allow it?..Nah they fine them 1/10th of what they will make that day,so they pay that like a tax!..
@@honorkemp
some amazing fishing can be done in those dredge ponds 😉
handling mercury with bare hands. must have been a lot of cancer and mental craziness.
John Ehmer
Lol... Might be where " GOLD fever " came from .
It would make them a little CRAZY , lol...
and dead rivers
Bill people don’t think anymore, they feel and reacts. Facts aren’t useful to people anymore.
Maybe that’s what is wrong with me. I can remember when I was in the second grade some boy brought some mercy to school and we were all playing with it in our hands.
And most likely the government knew and approved it to be used with a healthy payment to whoever approved it!.
Inner 🇨🇦 Alaska, Yukon Canada 🌵 has arctic cactaé that seals eat, whales swim up and gold like ⚖
I only buy :| All about saving thee venues.
I miss Alaska an Anchorage
The people were cool as hell
don't tell tony beats about this machine
David Alexander he already uses one!
@@StevenHanover I wonder what the chances that parts of this machine is on his current setup or setups.. I think he has 2 now.
he probably owns it
He's Canadian,so he will rebuild Canadian machines,before the ones in Alaska..Proud to say he is a Canadian miners buddy!!..
Guys you can look it up there is one on this video that absolutely the one he rebuilt
Thankfully , Miner's Moss has taken the place of the amalgam processes :)
Not really. You people should at least google “mercury used to extract gold” and read without agenda before you say retarded things.
Anigram Confirmed you are a very angry Google is bible believer,that clearly have no clue and only regurgitating what you read,but not understanding how to get a point,or a viable source that can make fact of anything you are saying.The very second I know someone really doesn't know what they are talking about,is when they use anger to trying and make people believe what they say..lol
🌵Inner Alaska, Yukon Canada 🦌
🇨🇦 has arctic cactaé that seals eat, whales swim up on pretty glaciers glossy eye's, and gold like ⚖
Trust me if this thing was running you wouldn't be able to hear the sound of boots on the deck.
I love Yukon God Potatoes.
find hott spoots add green plates
The yellow stones make the paleface crazy !
throughout history, anywhere in the world
So this guy with the paddle is working with mercury?
I love the calming elevator music at 26 minutes in, as they shovel hand fulls of mercury/gold amalgam into the retort, with absolutely no protection
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about how they handled the amalgam, must not have really understood the consequences back then...
Probably pretty safe . The mercury fumes when smelting is the danger .
Kinda wish it was in black and white
Noice!
gold!!!
What did he say about the miner supporting his shaft?
atach too a green glowing block
they certainly worked for their money in those day's.
That's a fine screen 🤔trichomes ?😅
Is this the voice? You,,,,, voice.
majic fluxxx thunder
The narrator sounds a lot like Nick Offerman.
Are they saying that they didn’t poison the environment by using mercury.
No, they said they recovered it.
I still can't believe they used mercury in that to extract the gold
Still do :)
The mercury causes the fine gold to form a solid mass. Without it the gold would just float away. What bothers me is them splashing the mercury around causing it to fall into the waterways. No wonder they are warning us about eating fish, the bigger the fish the more mercury that is built up in its system.
The poor guys thAt handled the merry
The poor guys that handled the mercury probably didn’t last long
Imagine, only 125 million dollar in all those years...
That was in 1949....... could've bought half the world back then :)
And I learned ice is expensive in Alaska.
Just in Springfield..
Theres gold in them thar hills .aviators are the miners .what a gravy train . like hippies thete all flying .get cert...
🤝🌹
Wow greed has killed Alaska
Background noise is to loud.
Liquid Mercury men playing with there mercury
And all that gold supplied by the sun going nova every 12,500 years
Not sure what you mean,
Gold is formed when stars go Supernova. Our Sun cannot produce gold as it is a heavier element and the Sun consists of two elements, hydrogen and helium which are extremely light elements.
Another thing to note is that the Sun does not go "Nova" every 12,500 years. Nova would mean the end of our Sun's life and all life on Earth as it would be consumed during the star's "Red Giant" phase.
I believe you are referring to the change in Earth's magnetic poles which have similar time scales.
@@jkfgaming7273 Time for you to start learning about the truth not what they tell you in science class. Search solar nova cycle on the net.
Dieter Soegemeier boy you are so smug and self satisfied that you got someone to bite on this retarded comment, aren’t ya?
I lmao when I see these kind of responses to someone disagreeing with another that checked on google ,so are no way wrong,and it made it fact the Moon produces gold!..haha..That is a liberal personality!..lol
And those sparkly diamonds are supplied by the rain going super-aqua every 14,000 years 👀🤫