A Dredge Roll Call – Contracts 60, 63, and 66.

The further west we go, the fewer dredges are seen as most of the digging took place in a dry environment with steam shovels and cable ways. Digging in the dry was better suited to the ladder dredge as the spoil could be used to build up banks or fill areas without all the wash water that was used in hydraulic dredges.

Contract 60 – The Mohawk Ladder Dredge

The ladder dredge Mohawk. Note the bank armoring in the foreground showing us that the channel was complete and that the dredge was either being used to deepen or fine tune the depth.
The ladders all worked with a belt conveyor that was attached to a separate and smaller barge. Note the sheet piling that is being used to help form the bank. The stone in the fore ground was likely used as a bank core.
The Mohawk in winter. Note the chain of buckets hanging from the boom.

Contract 60 – The Grapple Dredge

This un-named grapple used both a clam-shell bucket (top photo) and an orange-peel bucket (bottom). If you look close, you can see that the rig carried both buckets. This would have been used to conduct bank work and touch up areas along the canal.

Contract 63 – The Fairport All Electric Hydraulic Dredge

The Fairport was the only all electric dredge used during the construction of the Barge Canal.

The hull of the Fairport in the winter of 1911.
Note that there is no smokestacks!
The crew takes time to pose for this photo. What we don’t see is how it is connected to the shore power.
The caption says that the boats are stalled, but not certain what this means. The second boat in the line is a steam-power canal boat and it looks to be pushing and towing the other two. Perhaps stalled due to low water?

Contract 66 – The Mineola Ladder Dredge

For some reason there are more images of the Mineola then of the Mohawk, but both operated in the same manner. A chain of buckets scooped up the spoil and then delivered that to the banks by way of floating belt conveyors.

We get a nice look at the floating monster that was the ladder dredge. These were used more in western gold mining operations then in canal construction, but they were used to construct the the Fox River navigation in Wisconsin.
Here is a view of the backend.
We get a look at the operating environment.
Note the constructed channel ready to receive the spoils.