CSCE 2007 Annual General Meeting & Conference Congrès annuel et assemblée générale annuelle SCGC 2007
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories / Yellowknife, Territoires du nord-ouest June 6-9, 2007 / 6 au 9 juin 2007
Yukon Aerial Tramways - Wire, Wheels and Buckets in the Canadian North Ken Johnson, Earth Tech Canada Kevin Johnson, City of Nelson B.C. Abstract The placer gold mining “rushes” of British Columbia and the Yukon in the late 1800’s gave way to a silver “rush” in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in the same regions of Canada. The southern interior of British Columbia experienced a rush that whose legacies still endure to this day, whereas the Yukon’s silver rush is all but forgotten. Small scale placer mining required a fairly low level of technology compared to the demands for silver mining. Silver mining required modern technology for extraction, transportation and processing, and the engineers and manufacturers of the day were able to respond with many marvelous machines. Key to many silver mining operations of a century ago was the aerial tramway used for transporting ore from the mine site to a smelting operation, or some other inter model transportation facility. These “wires, wheels and buckets” were able to operate on gravity alone, and transported ore over rugged terrain. The pioneer of aerial tramways in North America was an engineer named Byron Riblet, who got his start in the Kootenay Region of British Columbia. The early influence of the Riblet expertise extended across the northwest, and ultimately into the Yukon with the construction of the Montana Mountain aerial tramway in 1905. This installation was over 5.5 kilometres in length with a vertical rise of over 1,000 metres, and one recording setting span of nearly 900 metres. The Montana Mountain mining activity, and the associated community of Conrad City, Yukon were short lived, however, much of the Riblet aerial tramway endures to this day as an historical artifact to the Yukon silver mining boom.
1. The History of Yukon Mining Although the gold strike of the Klondike River is the most famous mining discovery in the Yukon, previous discoveries were made in Yukon River tributaries downstream of Dawson City toward the community of Circle, Alaska, 300 kilometres away. Production began in the mid-1880s with discoveries along the Fortymile River, which is 75 kilometres downstream from Dawson City. In 1895, gold was found on a series of creeks just downstream of Dawson City, and by 1896 active mining was taking place on all the principle streams in the region around Circle, Alaska. The Klondike River gold discovery in August 1896 was the discovery that brought fame to the region, and a stampede of 40,000 people.
1