Community Corner
Updated: What Is This Contraption and Where Was It Located?
Chances are you may never have seen this in the neighborhood.
Editor's Note: Many people checked in with their answers to the weekend's "" question. Most people were right, too. Fair Oaks Patch reader "" correctly answered that the contraption was a gold dredge. Kevin also astutely pointed out that it was indeed hard to pinpoint the dredge's location "because they moved around building their own lake as they went so they could float and keep dredging."
Here's what Fair Oaks historian James Pearce had to say about this photo:
This is the Ashburton Dredge, working somewhere between Folsom and Fair Oaks. Actually, its exact location is hard to fix, as the dredges, built on-site, moved along in their own little pond, dredging the old river bed for gold and disposing of the river rocks in piles that are all-too-familiar to local residents. As they dredged, the pond enlarged in front of them and filled in behind. There were about nine dredges that worked in the area at one time or another, primarily on the south side of the American River, from Bradshaw Road to Prairie City Road west to east, and Folsom City to Mather Air Force Base north to south. They operated from about 1900 to 1955, when the last working dredge burned.Can you guess what this contraption is?
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Its exact location is hard to fix, said Fair Oaks historian, James Pearce.
How could something like this have ever existed in Fair Oaks? To what purpose could it possibly be put and, for that matter, where?
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We know, but we're not telling. Not yet.
You can start guessing now. We'll reveal the answer at the beginning of the work week. You can place you answer in the comments below.
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