You can also visit the terminal for the Sumpter Valley Railroad, now a tourist train, and the dredge is open all day for inspection during the visitor season. When the company retired the dredge, it was in debt, but over the years this third dredge produced about 4 ½ million dollars in gold, worth about $160,000,000 at 2017 prices! Trails lead among the dredge channels and rock piles, now overgrown with willows and cottonwoods, and up to a viewpoint of the dredge itself. ![]() The dredge that you see today was constructed from the remains of the first dredge, and operated for 20 years until 1954 the 24-hour clank and rattle of the dredge buckets were just normal background music for Sumpter residents in the first half of the 20th century. ![]() Small operations had played out by the beginning of the 20th century, but in 1913, the Sumpter Valley Dredging Company of Portland, Oregon, moved in the first of its three industrial dredges that completely transformed an eight-mile section of the Powder River valley. The discovery of major placer gold deposits in Sumpter the next year initiated a gold rush that soon saw 10,000 individual claims filed in the Powder River/North Fork John Day area of eastern Oregon. Prospector Billy Griffin had tried his luck in California and southern Oregon, but by late 1861, he had drifted over to the vicinity of today’s Baker City, and there struck pay dirt. ![]() 6 Guidebooks that cover this destination.
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