On the landscape. For years the isolated pioneer miner crouched streamside with his pan or rocked his sluice box to glean gold dust and the occasional nugget. A few got rich but many just got tired and dirty. Then the word got out that there is gold up here and within only a few years the creeks were filled with highly mechanized equipment. Huge dredges dug their way along stream beds hogging out buckets full of stone and silt, screening out the gold. The discharge end swings as it spills out the debris and leaves a curling trail of rounded boulders and fine glacier silt. Dredge poop. Over the years the silt has been carried away by rains and floods of the mighty Yukon River until all that remains is row upon row of snaking ridges of stones. Placer gold is found up here at the bottom of the alluvial fields left by glaciers. Countless years of erosion released the gold from its original ore and deposited it as a layer. It might wash out in streams to be panned or has to be dug out from under some 20 feet of permafrost. They still mine for gold here: from the lone guy with his pan to the highly automated equipment owned by huge corporations. They do reclaim/restore the landscape a bit nowadays but I suspect in a hundred years folks will see scars left by today’s prospectors as well. Ah, the allure of gold!