Gold Mining in the Long / Porman area near Ruby, Alaska

These are pictures of commercial mining on Swift Creek


Feeding the trommel. That's Barry in the plaid shirt watching for a BIG nugget to roll out.

Removing the tailings. Barry is one of the few people still around who can run a dragline without tangling the cable on the spool. It can take hours to untangle when an inexperienced operator lets the spool spin.

The overburden is removed to get to the pay dirt. After the gravel is mined the hole is filled, the top soil is replaced then replanted so little or no sign of the mining will remain.

Water for mining is recycled from the settling pond to avoid any contamination or turbidity in area streams.

Here a Gold Screw is used to move waste away from the sluice boxes.