The first prospectors on the Yankee Fork searched for small particles of gold known as placer gold, eroded from exposed ore veins in surrounding hillsides and washed down valley walls into stream channels. Prospectors used gold pans, sluice boxes, and hydraulic giants to remove placer gold from the Yankee Fork, and despite the variety of tools, each worked on the same principle: water washed and agitated sand and gravel, allowing gravity to separate the heavy gold particles from the lighter surrounding material. The Yankee Fork Gold Dredge created the numerous gravel piles, or tailings, along the Yankee Fork River and provided the most visible evidence of placer mining there. Operating between 1940 and 1952, this Depression-era dredge removed enough gold to create a gold brick two feet square. Restored by former employees, the dredge rests at the mouth of Jordan Creek near the site of the Yankee Fork's first gold discovery.