Coal Creek Dredge

The Coal Creek Dredge is a hulking, land-chewing, industrial caterpillar. Dormant now, the beast sits idle in the center of Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, a legacy to the mining history of the park. It’s an ugly thing, operated on and off into at least the late 1970s. Now, it’s a memorial of sorts. I, for one, am thankful that the dredge is no longer clambering up the bed of Coal Creek clawing bucket after bucket of rock and dirt from the ground in search of tiny flakes of yellow metal.

Now, it’s a fascinating, if somewhat disturbing place to explore. The park service has made the choice, a good one in my opinion, to simply allow it be open to the visitors. Inside, is a maze of pathways, cat walks and dark rooms, still reeking of diesel and engine oil. Everything is in place from bins of hardware, to gloves, hoses, and oil cans. At any time, it seemed, the great Atlas engine could sputter, and roar to life.

This summer during a float down the Yukon from Eagle to Circle, my group and I spent a few hours exploring the site. It was a cloudy and misty day, appropriate to poke around such a place. Inside, the diffuse light and dark, oiled machinery just screamed for black and white photography. Outside of my normal subject matter, I found the dredge a challenging place to shoot.

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