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The quest for gold begins! After arriving in Enjoy a part of We welcome 'drop-in' gold panners should you want to pan for one hour, or
part of a day. You may also wish to stay in our comfortable 'kitchenette-style'
canvas wall tents and enjoy the quiet, relaxed setting of the Hunker Creek
valley. Bring your own food, do your own cooking and experience a Sourdough
camp lifestyle. Reserve for one night or longer. From our camp you can look
at Hike or mountain bike along the historic Ridge Road Trail to Learn about the engineering marvels that miners used after the Gold Rush,
during the days of the gold dredges until 1960. Water ditches, dams, dredges
and old time machinery can still be found today as a testimony to the miners
of their efforts used in their search of gold. Walking throughout our creek valley you can find what remains of pioneer life during the Klondike Gold Rush. Rusted food cans, stoves, picks and shovels hide under the carpet of moss on the forest floor. Who knows, perhaps some of these were even used by Andrew HUNKER, a native of Germany, who was the first to discover gold on this Klondike River tributary named in his honor.
The picture above was taken in 1899 on claim 37 Above Discovery, now one of our claims. Photo courtesy Yukon Archives. This is how gold was mined during the gold rush. Panning a creek was only to find a good indication of more gold in the area. Most gold was found in the ancient or prehistoric creek beds, which had long been covered over by layers of new gravel and soil, known to a miner as 'overburden' or 'muck'. Today we remove the overburden for you by machines. During the gold rush, miners hand dug holes or 'shafts' into the ground until they reached the ancient creek bed and the gold bearing gravel. This was done during the winter, thawing the frozen ground with fires and later with steam. Shafts could be 3 metres (10 feet) to 30 metres (100 feet) deep! Fires thawed the ground about 30 cm or one foot per day! A miner never knew if he would find gold at the bottom or not. Gold bearing gravel was then taken to the surface by a 'windlass' (hand cracking winch) and piled until spring when the creeks flowed again and the gravel could be sluiced.
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