Gold Placers Incorporated, Coak Creek Dredge, Near Coal Creek & Yukon River, Eagle, Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, AK

Significance: In 1934, Charles Janin, a prominent San Francisco mining engineer, designed a 4-cubic-foot dredge for Gold Placers Incorporated, a newly formed mining company organized by General A.D. McRae of Vancouver and Ernest Patty, mining engineer of Fairbanks. The company contracted with the Walter W. Johnson Company, dredge builders of Oakland, California, to erect the medium-sized gold dredge on Coal Creek, Alaska. The dredge began operation in the summer of 1935 in the upper end of the Coal Creek Valley. The dredge is a significant example of the medium-sized dredges which operated in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. It remains little changed since 1935. The Coal Creek Valley contains the original camp buildings and objects left from the active dredging era. The dredge last operated in 1977. The Coal Creek Dredge and the mining claims in the Coal Creek Valley were donated to the National Park Service in 1986.
Survey number: HAER AK-11-A
Building/structure dates: 1935-1936 Initial Construction
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 95000573