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Maggie’s Gold Mine

An Introduction to Yukon Placer Mining A book for children.

Story by Elaine Schiman & Tara Christie

Designed and Illustrated by Andrew Livingstone

Figure, pages 32-33, by Bill Lebarge

A Publication of the Klondike Placer Miners’ Association, in conjunction with Yukon Energy Mines and Resources.

Copyright 2007

Willow Publishing Inc

Funding Provided by: Klondike Placer Miners’ Association & Energy, Mines and Resources, Yukon Government

Special thanks for time and sponsorship to: Gimlex Gold Mines & The Christie’s (Jamie, Brea, Ethan, Tara, Dagmar, Jim, Sheamus& Kara)

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Introduction This activity book was created to help children, especially those living in the Yukon, learn about and understand placer mining. The book includes a story that takes children on a guided tour of a modern placer mine. The story is accompanied by drawings which can be coloured and that show what various parts of a placer mine look like. The book concludes with some gold facts and puzzles and activities. Our hope is that the book will be used by parents, teachers and children in a variety of ways. We invite you to photo-copy pages of the book, if more copies are needed. This book is an initiative of the Klondike Placer Miners’ Asso-ciation (KPMA), with support from Yukon Energy Mines and Resources. We hope you enjoy it and find it useful! To request additional copies, or to provide comments, please contact the KPMA at 867-667-2267.

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Welcome ! This is Maggie.

Her family operates a placer gold mine on Willow Creek

near Dawson City, Yukon.

Let’s follow her around her mine and learn about modern placer mining (pronounced plass-er).

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Maggie’s family starts the day by eating a big breakfast of sour-dough pancakes with syrup and fruit. They will need lots of energy for the busy day ahead. Today is a special day because Maggie’s cousin Jack has just ar-rived for a visit. It’s his first time on a placer mine!

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Grains of gold are much smaller than nuggets. They might be the same size as a grain of rice, or a sugar crystal.

Placer mining involves looking for gold nuggets or grains of gold that were left in ancient stream beds and are now hidden under layers of soil and gravel.

Every gold nugget has its own spe-cial shape and size. Most nuggets can fit easily in the palm of your hand, although a few can be much larger.

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The first thing that Jack wants to try is gold panning. Maggie shows him how to dip the pan into the gravel on the edge of the creek.

When she swirls the creek water around the pan, it slowly washes the dirt and gravel away. If there is any gold there, it will sink to the bottom of the pan. That’s because gold is very heavy compared to most other kinds of dirt and rock. Jack finds a few flakes of gold!

DID YOU KNOW ?

Gold is almost 20 times heav-ier than water and is twice as

heavy as lead.

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In order to find gold, today’s placer miners need more than gold pans. They have to use large heavy machinery. At Maggie’s mine, they have to remove about 10 meters (30 feet) of overburden, layers of soil and gravel that do not con-tain gold. Once the overburden is gone, miners can reach the bottom gravels and bedrock that may contain gold. This is called pay dirt.

PAY DIRT

OVERBURDEN

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Maggie’s big brother drives a bulldozer, which pushes the pay dirt into piles. “In the Yukon, the ground is always frozen,” Maggie tells Jack. “It’s called permafrost. When we mine, we remove the layers of dirt gradually, as they start to thaw. Then we wait and let the piles of pay dirt thaw out completely, before we can process it.”

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EXCAVATOR

The pay dirt slides through the hopper into another part of the sluice plant called the trommel. The trommel is shaped like a huge barrel, which turns around and around.

A large machine called an excavator then picks up the pay dirt and shovels it into the hopper of the sluice plant.

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STACKER

COARSE TAILINGS

TROMMEL

SLUICE PLANT

FINE TAILINGS

The pay dirt spins, tumbles and bounces its way through the trommel. Jets of water, moving at a very high speed, help to push the pay dirt through. Inside the trommel, there are screens or pieces of mesh. As the trommel turns, the tiniest pieces of gravel are separated from the larger rocks.

The large rocks are fed up into the stacker, a conveyor belt that drops them to the ground, away from the sluice plant.

The smaller pieces of gravel are pushed through the screens into the sluice runs. The gold grains or nuggets are heavier than the other gravel, so they fall through the screens and are caught underneath by the riffles and mats in the sluice run. Riffles are metal ridges set along the sluice run that hold down the mats. The mats are made of plastic or rubber. They look a lot like a door mat.

HOPPER

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Water is very important for all placer mines. The water used at this mine comes from Willow Creek. It was pumped into a pond, where another pump takes the wa-ter to the sluice plant. As it runs through the sluice plant, sediments (mud or dirt) are stirred up. That makes the wa-ter look brown and muddy.

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The water from the sluice plant runs into a series of ponds that Maggie’s family has built. They are called settling ponds because the water is kept there until the dirt has settled to the bottom. Then, the water is clean enough to be used again in the sluice plant or to run back into Willow Creek. “We recycle most of our water,” Maggie tells Jack. “That means we can use the same water over and over again. That’s better for the environment!”

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“Where is everyone?” wonders Jack.

Maggie and Jack find Maggie’s dad in the maintenance yard, work-ing together with a mechanic.

When Maggie and Jack wake up the next day, it is very quiet. They can’t hear the excavator or the bull-

dozer or the sluice plant or any of the other big ma-

chinery.

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Maggie’s dad explains that some parts on the excavator are bro-ken. He is welding the broken parts back together, while the me-chanic works on another piece of equipment. Even though the heavy equipment and sluice plant are not running today, there is always something going on at a placer mine. “Let’s help Mom clean up the sluice plant!” suggests Maggie.

“Clean it up?” puzzles Jack.

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“We have to clean the mats at the bottom of the sluice plant so that we can get the gold out,” explains Maggie. Clean-up is a wet job, so Maggie and Jack put on boots and rain gear. They remove the riffles from the sluice plant and take out the mats underneath. That’s where they find sediments called concentrate. Concentrate is made up mostly of gold and other heavy minerals that have been caught by the riffles and the swirling water.

They dip each mat into a tub of water and shake it until all the concentrate falls out into the water.

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Maggie uses a scraper to pick up more concentrate from the bottom of the sluice run.

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Now the tub full of concentrate must be moved. It’s so heavy that Maggie’s brother must use a truck with a crane to lift it.

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The tub is taken over to a jig, which is a small version of a sluicebox. It has special metal baskets inside, filled with lead balls. As the tub concentrate washes through the jig, the gold sinks to the bottom and the lighter materials wash away.

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After all the material washes through the jig, Maggie’s mom opens the valve on the bottom of the jig. Water, gold and other minerals rush out into two buckets. The gold is still mixed in with other materials and needs to be cleaned some more. So Maggie’s mom scoops it onto a panning wheel. As the wheel turns, the gold moves up the ridges on the front of the wheel and falls into a pan. The lighter ma-terials wash away into a tub.

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Maggie’s mom now puts the gold into a gold pan. Maggie rinses away any remaining materials that aren’t gold. “I can see why water is so important on a placer mine,” says Jack. “The pay dirt and gold gets washed over and over!” “That’s right,” says Maggie’s mom. “We have to take good care of all the water we use because it helps us do our work.”

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After the gold grains are dried off in an oven, Maggie weighs them on a scale. “It looks like we now have enough gold to make bars,” Maggie tells Jack. “It’s really fun to watch my dad melt all these tiny grains into a gold bar!”

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The next day, Maggie’s dad pre-pares the furnace, which looks like a large metal bucket. The gold grains are placed inside a smaller bucket that fits inside the fur-nace.

It is so hot inside the furnace that Maggie and Jack can see a glowing orange and yellow flame coming out of the top. That’s because the furnace must be heated to more than 1100 degrees Celsius, in order for the gold to melt!

Maggie’s dad wears a pro-tective mask, gloves and apron to make sure he is not accidentally burned by the heat. He carefully re-moves the small bucket full of liquid gold from the furnace and pours it into molds shaped like bricks.

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The gold bars need time to cool and then they are washed in water. After that, they are shiny and beautiful. But they are so heavy that Maggie and Jack can barely pick one up!

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The next day, Maggie and Jack go fishing. “I want to catch a grayling for supper,” Jack tells Maggie. “When I was just a baby, my mom and dad used to mine right here,” says Maggie. “This used to be one of their settling ponds. After they took all the gold that they could find, they reclaimed this mine and moved the camp to our new mine.”

All placer miners must reclaim mines after they’re finished with them. This means that they clean up the area so it can be used again by animals, plants and other people. The miner puts the topsoil back so that the grass, willows and trees will grow back quickly. This is called reclamation.

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“Look!” says Jack, “A cow moose and her calf are on the other side of the lake!” “They come here a lot,” says Maggie. “My dad thinks they like eating the young grass and willows we planted on our old mine site.”

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“How did you know that there was gold in this valley?” Jack asks. “This looks just like an ordinary valley.” “I think we should ask Dad that question,” says Maggie. “Let’s go find him.”

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“Many years ago, I went prospecting in this valley,” Maggie’s dad explains. “That means I was exploring in the bush, looking for a good place to mine. I thought this val-ley might have gold, so I staked a claim here.”

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“We applied for permits to explore and then brought a big drill here to help us check for gold in the ground,” says Maggie’s dad. “We were very happy when the drilling showed some signs of gold.”

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“But why is the gold buried so deep?” asks Jack. “Many years ago, the stream used to run way down low in the valley, near the bedrock,” says Maggie’s dad. “Over many thousands of years, the sediment and soil has built up. It buried the old stream bed, the bedrock and the gold. The stream that you see today is much higher than the stream used to be.”

“Typical” p

Gold-quartzvein

Black Muck with Pleistocene fossils

Bench gravelsburied placer

Note: Bill is going to provide a new image for here.

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placer deposit setting, unglaciated Yukon

Bedrock

Colluvium

s withgold

Point bar with flood gold

Placer gold inmodern gravel channel

Figure provided by: William Lebarge, geologist, Yukon Government

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After supper, Maggie and Jack head over to the neighbour’s mine. There is lots of work to do every day, but the summer days are long, and there is still time for fun! Every Tuesday night, miners and their families from all around the area gather to play a game of baseball.

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On rainy days, there is lots of indoor work to do on a placer mine. Maggie’s mom is working on permits for a new mine that the family wants to open in a few years. Placer miners must follow special rules to make sure their mine does not hurt the environment.

Maggie’s mom shows the kids how to look at the family’s claims on the computer. While she looks at the maps, Maggie dreams of staking her own claims someday!

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After a while, Maggie’s mom can see that the kids are bored with being inside. “Come with me,” she says. “I want to show you something.” “We found this in the mine last week. Can you guess what it is?” she asks.

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Like many other placer miners, Maggie’s family sometimes digs up old bones while mining. This skull and tusks are proba-bly from an ancient mammoth that lived a very long time ago. “We’ll show this skull and the tusks to paleontologists,” says Maggie’s mom. “It’s their job to study the remains of ancient animals who lived long ago.” Jack is amazed! There are many mysteries to be discovered under the ground at Maggie’s mine, not just gold and minerals, but ancient bones too!

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It’s time for Jack to go back home today. Maggie and Jack are both sad, but Maggie’s father cheers them up with a spe-cial surprise.

He opens up his hand and shows Maggie and Jack some small nuggets.

“You can take two of these gold nuggets home with you Jack,” he says. “Every time you look at them, you can remember what it’s like to be a placer gold miner.”

“And this gold will help remind me to come back for another visit next summer!” says Jack.

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Do you wonder where all the gold goes after it leaves Yukon’s placer mines?

The gold bars made at placer mines are taken to gold buyers, often in Dawson City. The gold buyers ship the gold to a re-finery where it is refined into pure gold. The gold is then sold on the world metal market. Af-ter that, it is used to make things that people need every day. For example, gold is used in jew-elry, windows, electronics, light switches, TVs, computers, air-planes and satellites.

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MAGGIE'S MINE CROSSWORD Hint: Read the story to find the clues to solve this puzzle.

1 2

3

4 5

6

7

8

9

10 11

Word Bank

12 Bulldozer Concentrate Ex-cavator Flakes Jig Mam-

moth Moose Permit Recla-mation Refinery Sourdough

Trommel

Across:

1 Name of sediments and gold removed from sluice

Down: 4 Term for returning the land to a useable state

2 Machine that turns around and separates gold from gravel

7 Tracked machine with a large blade

3 Piece of equipment that is filled with lead balls

8 Animal Maggie and Jack saw at the lake

5 Tracked vehicle with a long arm and bucket.

9 Ancient animal that the bone and ivory tusk came from

6 A mine must have one of these to operate

10 Type of pancakes they ate

11 Place where gold is sent to get melted into pure bars.

12 The gold that Jack took home

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PLACER MINING CROSSWORD

Word Bank 1 2

Claim Drill Gravity Loader Mats Nugget

Panning Placer Prospector

Pump Riffles Shovel Sluice

3 4

5

6 7

8 9 10

11

12

Across

1 A technique used to test for gold in streams

3 A tool used by placer min-ers in the 1900's Down

5 A machine that is used to get water to a sluice plant

1 A person who searches for gold or minerals

6 Before exploring an area you must stake a _______.

2 The force that makes gold

sink to the bottom of a gold pan.

7 This machine is used to test an area for gold 4 A rubber tire vehicle with a

bucket on the front 8 Gold is caught in these

within the sluice box 9 Flume used to recover gold

11 Name of a large piece of gold 10 Gold is caught in these within

the sluice box 12 Name of the type of gold

mining in the Klondike

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GOLDEN THINGS

Gold's unique chemical and physical properties make this metal invaluable in today's society. Gold does not rust, tarnish, corrode or react when exposed to air, water or oxygen. These prop-

erties make gold an important part of many common and everyday items. Gold is also com-pletely recyclable.

Y I F E C E L E C T R O N I C S R S A N I C A L C U L A T O R J O W E E L S L O I E H I I W Y T O E M I L M E U L A R C A P P E N O B W P T A I R L I T B T I O D L O G O E U C Y C E I N I A R N D A R I N T L T H S O K N G N G O E R E T S I B R E E R N A P S G S P E L S S I M M Y R S E D M U R E F L E C T I V E G L A S S U E M I M L A B N I C E L L U L A R C C P N T I T C L G O L D C R O W N T A A G B S E P H O N E A R I N G A O P N I O C O N N E C T O R S B A R R E R F D L E I H S N O I T A I D A R S A T E L L I T E V I T A R O C E D

Find all these things that contain or can be made from gold in the Word Search:

Air Bag Connectors Insulin Pump Relays I-POD

Bar Electron-ics Jewelry Ring

Calculator Decorative (Coating) Pace Maker Robot

Cellular Dentistry Pan Satellite

Chain Electroplate Pen Semiconductor

Clip Filling Phone Stereo

Coin Gold Crown

Radiation Shield Switches

Computer Ingot Reflective Glass Television

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MINERALS AND METALS FOUND IN PLACER DEPOSITS

When placer miners clean out their sluice box, the material that they collect may contain many of these metals and minerals.

Find the metals and minerals in the word search. The letters that are not used in the word search will form a phrase.

Hint: The material that placer miners remove from their sluice box is called heavy _____________ ______________________.

Barite

C A S S I T E R I T E P Cassiterite

D I A M O N D K A D S L Copper

C O P P E R G Y R L G A Diamond

Q U A R T Z O A E O A T Fools Gold

C E N E I P L N V G R I Galena

O T E A T Y D I L S N N Garnet

N I L M A R U T I L E U Gold

C R A T M I N E S O T M Hematite

M A G N E T I T E O E I Kyanite

N B R N H E T E T F L R Magnet-ite

Platinum

Pyrite

Word Scramble Hint: Heavy M_ _ E_ _L C_ _ C _ N _ _ _ _ E Quartz

Rutile

Silver

Tin

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YUKON PLACER MINING STREAMS

A V E K I D N O L K M B B S U L P H U R U B Y I O O T H I S T L E Q U I L N U G M M O O S E U R R L A L L A Y U K O N A E E E N D A Y T O N B A R K E R Z E C O X T O E I T N D S A R I M I N S A D Z U E L M A E A S I W R N A H W A D E R I L M A R I P O S A O L R S E L D O R A D O R M C U Y D U Y R E V O C S I D O M G I B T N E S N A N U M A E U R E K A X M B I B Y Y G O L D R U N E L O L E I L L I H T E G G U N I S E Y A H E N D E R S O N B L A C K H I L L S B D T I S E A T T L E C H R U R G B T R A G G A H C E N A G V A N C O U V E R W C W O I L C A S I N O A E A E L A S T C H A N C E R N T D O L G L L A K A T S E S

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The Yukon has many streams, creeks and gulches where placer gold is found. See if you can find the

streams listed in the word search.

Allgold Eureka Moose

Arch Eva Nansen

Barker Gem Nugget Hill

Bear Glacier Owl

Big Gold Run Quartz Big Gold Haggart Reed

Black Hills Hayes Ruby

Bonanza Henderson Seattle

Boulder Hunker Sestak

Brewer Indian Seymour

Casino Klondike Sixtymile

Clear Last Chance Slate

Dawson Ledge Stewart

Discovery Maisy May Sulphur Dominion Mariposa Swede

Dublin Mayo Thistle Duncan Miller Vancouver

Eldorado Minto Wade

Yukon

Can you think of 4 Yukon streams that have placer gold that are not in the puzzle ?

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MINERALS AND METALS This puzzle is hard ! You may need the help of a geologist, teacher or parent.

1 2

3 4

5

6 7

8

9

10

11

Mineral

Across: Cassiterite Copper Galena Garnet Gold

Hematite Kyanite Magnetite Platinum

Pyrite Quartz Silver

3 A strongly mag-netic mineral, often called black sand

5 This glassy mineral, often white, is the main rock type in “White channel gravel”.

Down:

1 This metal is commonly used in jewelry and is naturally often alloyed with gold

8 This mineral is blue and has differential hardness.

2 This iron bearing mineral has a red streak (when rubbed on porcelain) and is often red or dark brown.

9 Very heavy mineral that breaks into grey metallic cubes

4 A red, very hard, mineral that is also the Janu-ary birthstone

10 A placer mineral recovered to make tin.

6 The mineral commonly referred to as “Fool’s Gold”

11 Metal that is a good conduc-tor, highly resistant to corro-sion and used in many elec-tronic devices

7 A grey precious metal that is strong and corro-sion resistant. It is 35 times more rare than gold.

10 A brown native metal sometimes found as nug-

gets

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PLACER MINING WORD SCRAMBLE

All of these words are mixed up, can you sort them out to form words that are related to placer mining in the Yukon?

1. gntueg________________ 11. aloerd________________ Word Bank

Backhoe

2. rclaep________________ 12. boehakc________________ Bulldozer

Concen-

trate

3. loubzdler________________ 13. riprep________________ Conveyor

Drilling

4. eratxoacv________________ 14. etoorapr________________ Excavator

Gravel

5. rqztua________________ 15. rseiflf________________ Hydraulic

Loader

6. rgelva________________ 16. saketr________________ Mine site

Nugget

7. ilgnridl________________ 17. renooyvc________________ Operator

Permit

8. emrtpi________________ 18. uciyrhlda________________ Placer

Quartz

9. tocenntcear________________ 19. sveie________________ Riffles

Ripper

10. imesnite________________ 20. nltsiiag________________ Sieve Staker Tailings

MATCH WORDS Can you match up the words on the right with words on the left?

STAKE BONE

GOLD CLAIM

SETTLING PANCAKES MAMMOTH PAN

SOURDOUGH POND

GOLD BAR REFINERY

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AT MAGGIE'S MINE CROSSWORD

C O N C E N T R A T E R O J R E C L A M A T I O N X M G P C E E A B U L L D O Z E R V M O O S E M A M M O T H I T T S O U R D O U G H R E F L A K E S I N E R Y

PLACER MINING CROSSWORD

P A N N I N G

R R

O A

S S H O V E L

P U M P I O

E T A

C L A I M Y D R I L L

T E

O R

R I F F L E S M

L A N U G G E T I S P L A C E R

E

MINERAL CROSSWORD S H M A G N E T I T E A L M Q U A R T Z V A N E T P E R I P

K Y A N I T E T L

R G A L E N A I T T C A S S I T E R I T E E G O L D N P U P M E

R

PUZZLE ANSWERS

PLACER MINING WORD SCRAMBLE 1. Nugget 11.Loader 2. Placer 12. Backhoe 3. Bulldozer 13. Ripper 4.Excavator 14.Operator 5. Quartz 15.Riffles 6. Gravel 16. Staker 7. Drilling 17. Conveyor 8. Permit 18. Hydraulic 9. Concentrate 19. Sieve 10.Mine site 20. Tailings

METALS AND MINERALS FOUND IN

PLACER DE-POSITS

The material that placer miners remove from their sluice box is called heavy mineral concen-trate.

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Gold Facts !

Specific gravity: 19.3 Melting Point: 1064 Degrees Celcius Atomic Symbol: Au Malleabillity: 1 ounce can be stretched into a thin wire more than 35 miles long or 1/2 ton of gold could form a thread that stretched from the moon to the earth. Gold can be stretch so thin that light can pass through it. Gold is a good conductor of electricity. Common Alloys (mixtures of metals): White Gold—Alloy of Gold, nickel, silver, palladium and copper Red Gold—alloy of copper Green Gold—alloy of silver and/or nickel The largest alluvial nugget ever found was called the Welcome Stranger. It weighed 2316 troy ounces and was found in Aus-tralia. All the gold that has been mined in the world would fit in a cube with 18 meters sides and would be about 145,000 tonnes.

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