Sumpter, Oregon

Can you imagine what it must have been like back in the day before cars, when you would travel this distance on an old covered wagon?

Deer on the route to Sumpter, then spooked then all stopped and looked at us.

Wild mustangs must have roamed wild and free back in the day that Sumpter was established, though these mares and their colts were not Mustangs that we saw.

These beautiful Barn Owls posed nicely for a photo shoot on our drive to Sumpter. The looked like a very happy couple.

A large and seeming happy Bull chewing his cud while laying in the grass.

You can see the history almost everywhere you look in Sumpter.

What a fun job it would be to drive this Historic Sumpter Valley Railroad Steam Engine in the beautiful city of Sumpter, Oregon.

The Sumpter Valley Railway was a logging and mining railroad with a long history.

It began in 1890, and the original freight line shut down in 1961, with only a short length of track in Baker City at the end.

The historic Sumpter Valley Steam engine with its gold bell and whistle.

The Sumpter Valley Railroad ran 80 miles between Baker City and Prairie City, Oregon.

It served several sawmills and connected with the Union Pacific in Baker City. SVRy was a narrow-gauge railroad to accommodate the sharper curves to get higher into the valleys being logged.

The SVRy included a switchback to get over one of the steeper passes in a shorter length of travel, without tunneling.

All Aboard!

Large gold nuggets spill from a barrel in Sumpter, Oregon. This is enough to give anyone gold fever!

A view of the front of the Sumpter Dredge from across the railroad tracks.

The Sumpter Valley Dredge is nestled at the base of the majestic granite peaks of the Elkhorn Mountain Range. The Powder River is born deep within the range and picks up speed as it spills down the Sumpter Valley, traveling through the park before reaching Phillips Reservoir.

Side view of the huge Sumpter Dredge.

This waterway was the vein of life during the boom days of the gold rush. The landscape still bears the scars. Miles of tailings line the banks of the river, a remembrance from the prosperous days of mining. The Sumpter Valley Dredge -- the centerpiece of our park -- left much of the rocky footprint that you'll see on your trek along Highway 7. The dredge is an important link to Oregon's pioneering past and development. It is one of the largest and most accessible gold dredges in the U.S.

As each bucket came over the top of the digging ladder, its material was dumped into a large hopper. From there everything fed into a cylindrical screen-6 feet across by 35 feet long., that continuously tumbled the material. High pressure water, running at 3000 gallons a minute rushed over the screen and its contents.

Gravity and water forced the material down the length of the screen. The material, including gold, fell out into a catch pan below, while the larger rocks and gravel were carried to the rear of the dredge and dumped into tailing piles by the stacker.

Inside, water continued to wash the finer sands, pebbles and precious minerals from the catch pan through a series of sluice boxes. Just about the whole back of the dredge was covered with sluices. In each one, there'd be a number of "riffles," kind of like a washboard. The sands and gravel were washed away while the heavier gold was trapped in the riffles.

As years passed, more efficient means of trapping the gold were developed. They added a box like contraption, called a jig, partly filled with round metal balls, like b-bs. Sand escaping from the riffles would drop into the jigs, where the balls would pulverize the material. Mercury added to both the riffles and the jigs would attach itself to the gold in the fine sands. This method was far more efficient at removing gold.

Very few people had access to the gold, at least officially. Though there are tales of embezzlement, the security of the gold became tighter as the years went by. After separating the gold from the mercury, it was poured into bricks for shipment to the US Treasury.

A half a century after the last dripping bucket load was lifted, the dredge stands silent.

The Dredge hull being 125 feet long and 52 feet wide, running 72 buckets (upgraded to 10 cubic feet) at a speed of 25 buckets per minute, and chewing up 225 cubic feet (8.33 cubic yards) per minute - averaging an estimated 100 acres per year. This dredge was also electric powered and had a 250 horsepower motor.

Until October of 1942, the dredge worked 24 hours per day, seven days a week, except Christmas and the Fourth of July. Then in October, 1942, all non-essential mining was ordered to halt for the duration of World War II. Germany surrendered in May of 1945, and dredging began again on July 5 of that year. Jigs were added, increasing the gold recovery to 93%.

The dredge in the park is the last of three built on the Powder River. Built in 1935, it ran until 1954. It dug up more han four million dollars worth by a simple, but dramatic method.

Sticking out from the dredge's hull is a massive boom bearing 72 1-ton buckets. The buckets, moving like the chain of a chainsaw, would bore into the riverbank and carry the loose rock back into the dredge interior.

Once inside, the rock would pass through a series of steel cylinders to separate the material by size, sending the smaller material deeper into the dredge. Using water and sluices, the gold would be separated from the sediment.

The spoils from this process and larger rock pass through the back of the dredge and are deposited behind it via another boom.

There is no fee to use this park. The dredge itself is closed in winter, but the trail around it is open all year. For information, call (541) 894-2486 or (800) 551-6949 for information.

According to theU.S. Geological Survey Sumpter has at least 80% of original gold still in the mountains of the area. If you do decide to dip your gold pan in the river, just be mindful of existing mining claims and private property.

Large buckets inside the dredge still hang.

A plaque in the Memory of George Mosley who lost his life while working on the Sumpter Dredge.

Feel the history beneath your feet as you walk through this historic gold dredge, you can almost hear the voices of those that spent so much of their life working for the gold extracted from the Sumpter Valley, gold that was not theirs but our governents.