Colorado's Mechanical Miners

Colorado's Mechanical Miners. These rock piles were left by nine gold dredging boats, the first to operate in the state brought here by Ben Stanley Revett. The earliest boats began dredging near the mouth of the Swan in 1898 and moved along the Swan and Blue Rivers and French Gulch. Much like the old time prospector sluicing a creek bed the mechanical miners dredged up these glacial rocks and separated them from the finer gravels from which they washed the gold weighing as much as five hundred tons.

The boats floated on ponds they created while dredging the river beds to depths of fifty feet in a swath some two hundred feet wide. The massive dredges continually threatened to invade Breckenridge itself until one finally succeeded in cutting its way through the mining town. The last boat ceased operations in 1942.

Erected by the Summit Historical Society, the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Endowment, and the State Highway Department.