Allan Farrell asks what’s up with a picture of a gold dredge he saw on a plaque downtown, and where the gold in the North Saskatchewan River comes from.

If you grew up in Edmonton, maybe you went through a confusing childhood learning process that went something like this:
1) Going to Klondike Days, and associating Edmonton with a gold rush
2) Getting older and learning that the Klondike was somewhere else, and concluding that Edmonton was just a gateway, with no gold industry of its own
3) Realizing no, there was in fact both gold panning and gold dredging in Edmonton, beginning in at least the 1800s.

Allan did not grow up in Edmonton. He first learned about gold dredging in the river when he read an interpretive panel downtown, which has since been removed.

We went to the City of Edmonton Archives, where City Archivist Kathryn Ivany helped us identify the picture of a gold dredge he saw. This is the photo Allan picked out of the lineup:

Here’s another example of the gold dredges in Edmonton around the end of the 19th century.

If you don’t want to be too spoiled about what we learned, listen to the episode before scrolling further.

This is the Google Street View blurry cached photo of the actual interpretive panel from 2017.

We met Jody Dahrouge, of Dahrouge Geological Consulting, to learn more about where the gold in the river comes from.

Jody let us hold his meterorite.

After all that learning, we really built up quite an apatite.

Further Reading:

• Riverdale: From Fraser Flats to Edmonton Oasis by Allan Shute and Margaret Fortier
• “The Lure of Gold in Alberta’s History: Part I”, written by Michael Donnelly for the RETROactive blog
• “The Lure of Gold in Alberta’s History: Part II”, written by Michael Donnelly for the RETROactive blog
• “Edmonton’s River Valley: The Glitter of the Gold Rush”, written by Pauline Bodebin for the RETROactive blog
• Donnelly, Michael. Gold Mining at Edmonton. Alberta History.  Spring 2017, Vol. 65 No. 2.

This episode is made possible by support from Taproot Edmonton and the Edmonton Historical Board.

We also gave shout-outs in the episode to the Edmonton Public Library summer reading club and The Well- Endowed Podcast.

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