Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This circa 1940 clip shows miners working and living at the Chatanika Gold Camp in Interior Alaska. Men prepare the area for gold dredging by driving thaw points, operating hydraulic giants or monitors to clear the muck, and testing for the locations of gold by using using a drill rig. Also visible are tailings piles left behind by previous dredging operations, and older wooden mine shafts from the early 1900s which are revealed as muck is cleared away.
According to a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article, Chatanika Gold Camp, located along the Steese Highway, once served as the Fairbanks Exploration Company’s largest operations base for gold dredging in the Fairbanks area. From the 1920s through the 1960s, massive dredges processed Cleary Creek’s low-grade placer gold. Dredge No. 3 began operating in 1928, the same year the Davidson Ditch was completed to supply water for dredging. Dredge No. 5 joined a year later, working upper Cleary Creek until 1947, when it was moved to Little Eldorado Creek. After decades of mining, the camp was converted into a resort and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. (Source: “Old Fairbanks Exploration Company camp still a central part of Chatanika,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, March 28, 2016, by Ray Bonnell).
According to the filmmaker's original notes, these scenes were filmed at Fish Creek, Cleary Creek, and/or Eldorado Creek (Color/Silent/16mm film).
This film clip is from AAF-16327 of the Arnie M. Lee and Family collection held by the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives department in the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The Alaska Film Archives appreciates your support. Your donation in any amount will help us continue important preservation work. Please visit the “About” section of our YouTube channel to learn how you can help today. Thank you! For more information please contact the Alaska Film Archives.
This circa 1940 clip shows miners working and living at the Chatanika Gold Camp in Interior Alaska. Men prepare the area for gold dredging by driving thaw points, operating hydraulic giants or monitors to clear the muck, and testing for the locations of gold by using using a drill rig. Also visible are tailings piles left behind by previous dredging operations, and older wooden mine shafts from the early 1900s which are revealed as muck is cleared away.
According to a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article, Chatanika Gold Camp, located along the Steese Highway, once served as the Fairbanks Exploration Company’s largest operations base for gold dredging in the Fairbanks area. From the 1920s through the 1960s, massive dredges processed Cleary Creek’s low-grade placer gold. Dredge No. 3 began operating in 1928, the same year the Davidson Ditch was completed to supply water for dredging. Dredge No. 5 joined a year later, working upper Cleary Creek until 1947, when it was moved to Little Eldorado Creek. After decades of mining, the camp was converted into a resort and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. (Source: “Old Fairbanks Exploration Company camp still a central part of Chatanika,” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, March 28, 2016, by Ray Bonnell).
According to the filmmaker's original notes, these scenes were filmed at Fish Creek, Cleary Creek, and/or Eldorado Creek (Color/Silent/16mm film).
This film clip is from AAF-16327 of the Arnie M. Lee and Family collection held by the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives department in the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The Alaska Film Archives appreciates your support. Your donation in any amount will help us continue important preservation work. Please visit the “About” section of our YouTube channel to learn how you can help today. Thank you! For more information please contact the Alaska Film Archives.
