Today, we took a little train ride back into an old gold dredging operation.
The gold rich gravel is bucketed up into this dredging machine. It's like hand panning on a huge scale. Lots of water is used to separate the heavy gold from the much lighter stones and sand.
We were all given a small bag of gravel called a "poke". We were instructed on dredging. First we kind of washed off the mud and then by swirling, it causes the heavy gold flecks to sink to the bottom. Then we carefully wash away the lighter sand, gravel and stones. Between Bob and I, we got $36 of gold.
The Alaskan pipeline is 800 miles long. It ends in Veldez and is shipped out. Alaska makes enough on the interest alone, to give every Alaskan citizen $1000 every year. They have no state income tax or sales tax.
$36 from a poke! Just think how rich you would become if you did some serious panning!
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