Gold on the North Saskatchewan

There is real gold in this river and there always has been. James Hector of the Palliser Expedition reported it in 1859 after being shown samples found near Fort Edmonton, and men came for it: pans first, then a home-made sluice called a grizzly, then floating mechanical dredges by the early 1890s. George Mercer Dawson counted as many as 300 miners working the valley around 1895, and twelve dredges were running in 1898. Then the Klondike took the men north, and by 1907 one dredge was left. Between 1887 and the late 1980s the river gave up something between 0.84 and 1.06 tonnes of gold. It is FLOUR gold, fine flat flakes that ride the current, so it sits where the water slows: inside bends, behind boulders, on the downstream side of gravel bars. People still work it. The known spots are Prospector’s Point at Devon, Terwillegar Park, Emily Murphy Park and the mouth of Gold Bar Creek in Edmonton. WHERE IT ACTUALLY IS, from the province’s own survey. The Alberta Geological Survey tested most of the major rivers in Alberta (open file report 1965-11) and found the highest concentrations on the North Saskatchewan in the stretch from DEVON, about 25 miles upstream of Edmonton, down to near a point due north of Myrnam, roughly 150 miles below Edmonton; a later one (open file report 1994-19) puts the richest placers in the province between Devon and Elk Point. Every grain they recovered passed a 35 mesh screen, so this is flour gold and nothing else, and gear set up for nuggets will pour it straight out the back. Today it comes out of this river two ways: as a by-product of sand and gravel processing, and by people with pans. Worth knowing if you are coming from the oil country to the southwest: Drayton Valley sits on the Pembina, which is not on that list. The nearest documented gold ground is Devon, about an hour northeast. THE RULES, from Alberta’s own placer pages: hand panning with non-mechanized equipment needs no licence and no agreement. A sluice box, or anything mechanized, needs a placer minerals licence, 50 dollars plus GST for five years. Dredging is prohibited outright in Alberta rivers and streams. You may work one place for 14 days at most, you need the landowner’s permission, Class A and B waters are open only from 15 May to 15 September, and royalty is owed if you produce and sell more than one troy ounce in a year.