Pat's 2024 Yuba Bash!

Keene Engineering, Inc.

6 days ago

Came across this old photo of David Knolen, my brother Pat, our dad Jerry Keene, and myself. David has been a great friend of the Keene family and someone we’ve worked with for close to four decades — helping with engineering ideas, testing equipment, and always someone we could call to bounce ideas off of. Looking at this photo really brings back memories. Time sure flies… wow, we were much younger once. ... See MoreSee Less

Keene Engineering, Inc.

1 week ago

Some friendships go beyond business.
I recently came across an article written by our longtime friend David Knolen. David has been helping the Keene family for nearly four decades — contributing engineering insight, field testing, and always being someone we could call to bounce ideas off of.
In this industry, relationships matter. The innovations we’ve developed over the years didn’t happen in isolation — they came from real-world testing, hard conversations, shared experiences in the field, and trusted friendships like David’s.
When you’ve been building mining equipment for 75 years, you realize something: it’s not just about the machines — it’s about the people behind them.
We’re grateful for friends like David who have been part of the journey.

The Ernie Keene Story
By Jerry Keene
(As Told To David Knowlen)

An Innovator Named Ernie Keene
When it comes to gold one fact, is generally accepted, we human beings place great value on this precious metal having long pursued a search for gold for many thousands of years. Gold has started wars and built personal fortunes. It became the standard for coinage and nations placed their global foundations on their gold holdings. Gold has been, indeed, important to mankind.
We know that ancient societies valued gold well over 5000 years ago, for ornamental purposes and later as a basis for creating and determining personal wealth. There is another strange fact about gold…it has a special attraction to men and women, and most who pursue finding it find they have caught something we call “Gold Fever”
Until the early twentieth century, when man began to use huge machines to mine for gold, most efforts used for prospecting and mining were with using manual mining equipment. Those tools of those times were the pick and shovel, a crudely fashioned sluice box or rocker boxes. Most people do not know that it was only seventy years ago, following World War Two that the most effective mechanical tool for recovering gold from within gold rivers and stream sources came into being, a relatively new machine developed only about seventy years ago.
That machine is the portable suction gold dredge.
The gold dredge broadened the basic ability for miners to recover gold in areas previously considered not feasible. Most importantly it brought new opportunities to placer miners and it served to expand the future capabilities of the small scale mining industry as well as launching a major new business that is known as KEENE ENGINEERING.
You might not know that there was one person, a technical innovator, a creative entrepreneur and inventor, who became the driving influence behind the remarkable development what we know today is the modern gold dredge.
That person was Ernie Keene…and here is his story.
From Texas Farm Boy to Innovative Mining Engineer
Ernie was born into a large Texas farming family during the early twentieth century. Times were tougher back then for farmers and most farm boys in those days worked with their families to sustain the farming operations. And then in the 192os the nation’s economy changed farther into the industrial society and many farmers had a hard time keeping the family farm productive.
Page One
That’s what happened to Ernie and his family. So when he was only twelve Ernie was forced to leave school and drive a truck to help his family make ends meet. And like most rural communities all family members had to share the difficult work in maintain the farmlands
It have been difficult for any young boy, especially for one who was smart and clever, a lad with big dreams and a vision and desire, to pursue the occupations of his parents and not decide to shape his own future. Ernie certainly had all of this drive and ambition, as well as a knack for being a quick learner. In spite of this Ernie did what most people had to do, by helping his family to survive during tough economic times and later a terrible and lasting drought that turned productive farmlands into vast Midwestern dust bowls.
Little could Ernie have not have known that these circumstances would bring him face to face with an opportunity that would alter the direction of his life.
It was during his teenage years, while traveling within the Midwest that Ernie became acquainted with an elderly couple. Those people befriended Ernie and they believed that he had far greater potential then just driving a truck or being a farmer. They saw that Ernie certainly did not lack ambition but knew he had a dream of finding a much better life. One who saw within himself a possibility of crafting a different future then his school friends and the local farm boys. He envisioned becoming involved somehow and somewhere, within the industry of… mining.
That couple encouraged him, helped him shape his dreams by offering him the greatest opportunity he could imagine, to direct him towards completing his education in mining.
So after graduating from school Ernie went off to the Colorado School of Mining and completed his education as a graduate mining engineer.
After graduating Ernie returned to briefly stay with his family in Texas. Soon after arriving home Ernie married and they later had a son. He had contemplated using his education for a starting his career but Ernie knew that Texas was just not a place to pursue a profession in the mining industry. Ernie and family decided to go west to pursue his career.
Together, the Ernie Keene family traveled to California so that he could pursue his ambition of a career as a mining engineer. Ernie was only in his mid-twenties. And, unfortunately, this was also during the early nineteen-thirties and at the height of the great depression. He quickly discovered that there were not a lot of job opportunities available back then within the mining industry. Ernie would have to find other means to support his young family.
The Keene’s settled in the Los Angeles area and Ernie began what became a successful building maintenance business. And while this business provided a reasonable living, running the business offered him precious little time for recreation and enjoying his family. Also, Ernie still dreamed of a future in mining.
With the small amount of spare time he had available, Ernie went prospecting… for gold, silver, uranium, tungsten, any mineral that would have value in the minerals marketplace. Another amazing thing that occurred to Ernie during his gold prospecting adventures was that he became bitten by what was then called the “gold bug”. Today this is what we call… “gold fever”.
Page Two
On weekends Ernie, accompanied by wife and son Jerry, would spend the time roaming around the mountain regions of California, Nevada and Arizona looking for what he often called…”that shiny yellow stuff”.
With the passing of time also came the end to the depression. It was now the early forties and much of the world was now in war. On December 7, 1941 the U. S. was attacked by Japan and the nation became fully involved in the global conflict. Pursuing gold was set aside for the war effort. Ernie too set aside his pursuit of gold.
War Ends and Ernie Pursues His Dream
In 1945 the Allies had won the war and the times were changing fast and so were the technologies of those times. Following the end of the war there came an era of expanding economic growth and opportunity for those willing to create a vision. Ernie’s business had flourished yet his real ambitions remained elsewhere.
He believed that his dream of prospecting for gold and minerals with the “Mother Lode” regions of California might just be able to earn him a good living. With this vision of finding gold Ernie sold his business and began what he called his new “retirement job”.
Much of the technological advancements of that era had been driven by the needs of the U. S. ad its allies towards winning the war. During the late 1940s many these technologies were finding new applications and becoming commercialized included new types of synthetic rubber along with the invention of what would be called ‘SCUBA’ diving. New types of industrial materials found uses in hundreds of new products. New synthetic materials along with manufacturing and production methods developed for the war effort were now changing the products of the nation’s commercial industries. Also new was the availability of smaller, lighter and more reliable gasoline engines that found uses in portable power equipment.
More importantly Ernie saw all of this and he considered how these new products might be utilized in gold mining. Knowing Ernie he was a dreamer, an innovator and a visionary and he possessed all the necessary talents for becoming a successful inventor. He envisioned incorporating some of these technologies into a device which he had first envisioned more than twenty years earlier.
What he had in his mind was a concept for a working portable, engine-powered, suction gold dredge. And Ernie was about to do something rather amazing.
He took out his old design drawings and sketches and began to modify them incorporating some new materials and technologies. He then went about building himself a working model that would be portable and floated on top of the water as it had its own floatation. He mounted a gasoline engine which turned a water pump which forced water at high pressure thru a hose and into a metal tube where it generated suction. Initial tests proved it worked, somewhat like a vacuum cleaner but instead of air, the device sucked up water along with streambed material.
Page Three
A flexible six-inch hose attached to the nozzle, the other end connected onto a metal sluice box. A small air compressor operated by the engine offered a source of air for a diver to work underwater. All the pieces for what was to be a suction dredge were all connected…and working as Ernie had envisioned.
He needed verifiable proof of his dredge concept so as a test of its performance he operated it for the better part of a year on central California’s Yuba River, working within the many historic streambeds where gold had once been plentiful. Most skeptics told Ernie that this region had long ago been “mined out” and would be just a waste of his time. He proved them all wrong by displaying jars of hos recovered gold.
Ernie still was not surprised when the dredge started producing results by recovering gold in these old rivers most believe had been all mined out. The oldtime miner’s could only work in shallow areas but with a suction dredge a diver with this air system could work many feet underwater, and for long periods of time. During that first year Ernie and his suction dredging machine work effectively and efficiently together, proving Ernie was right, that an abundance of gold remained in places where gold was supposed to be all worked out.
News of Ernie’s gold machine and its amazing success in recovering paying amounts of gold on the Yuba soon spread throughout the California “Mother Lode” regions. The machine had created a lot of interest within the mining community. Ernie was soon being asked if he would build “a couple of machines that he would sell”. But what do your call it was often the question Ernie heard. It needed a indentity so Ernie named it the “Keene Gold Sucker”
It should be noted that back then diving for gold was not necessarily new. It was, however, an adventure pursued only by a few as the equipment of that era was very bulky, difficult to transport and handle and very expensive. It was also dangerous. and unavailable for most people to acquire. By using a small air compressor and a breathing regulator, Keene’s new dredge would change all of that.
Ernie Keene likely could not have realized that his portable gold dredge would later create a whole new global business enterprise known today as Keene Engineering, nor could he have known that it would build the small-scale, independent mining industry into what exists today.
With his first year’s successes Ernie returned to his shop and built another dredge model, one with a twelve inch diameter suction hose and intake nozzle. Because, as well as being a good mining engineer Ernie was a creative mechanical designer and this new dredge incorporated improvements to the earlier model. And as one friend said, “Ernie could fabricate darned near anything”.
The following summer he returned to the Yuba, and the overall ‘commotion’ with local miners over the new gold dredge model, soon grew even greater. No one had seen such a machine like this, large but portable, efficient and light enough to be operated by one or two divers. How it would recover gold was just “plain amazing”
Page Four
Ernie worked with his gold machine for a few days, returning to town with a container stuffed full of his newly-found gold. And curious miners who would be waiting for his return to see just what (and how much) he had recovered.
News of Ernie’s gold dredge machine soon spread around all of the gold bearing regions of California, even east and into Colorado and other western gold producing states. His successes brought inquiries from not just friends but from other miners and mining companies, all wanting more details on his dredge.
He soon found a ready market for this device, one where someone who wanted to find gold simply had to buy one of Ernie’s “Gold Sucker” machines. And with a little training it produced a profit. While a few wanted to take his ideas and make build own models but most did not have the performance of Ernie’s dredge. He even received mail from strangers in other countries with requests for his dredge plans and he began to build a few units for his friends
All very quickly Ernie discovered that, like it or not, he was getting into the mining equipment manufacturing business. A business grew out of a half dozen requests for one of Ernie’s gold machines. And he found that his ‘gold sucker machine’ was becoming the industry standard for river miners seeking placer gold. He opened a small shop for building the dredges and business quickly flourished. And Ernie created other models, and clever enough to constantly improve his designs to beat his competition.
Jerry Keene, Ernie’s son, recalls those days telling that “dad built his first underwater air regulator from a coffee can and some items he found lying around his shop”. Like other devices Ernie had designed, the regulator worked quite effectively.
Jerry added, “In those days if you wanted something unique you had to build it yourself”.
Ernie opened a fabrication shop along with a dive store that sold diving equipment, located in Sacramento, California. The public demand for diving equipment was big so he soon opened stores in other locations. But Ernie had found the market strong for gold dredges and he built and sold and them to other gold miners along with Scuba, wet suits and other diving gear. The Keene equipment business was growing quickly. Realizing the market potential for his dredge designs was very good he began to consider finding larger manufacturing facilities.

Success Becomes an International Business
Humble beginnings from a man with a vision who was also willing to take a risk, Ernie and his “Gold Sucker” mining machine eventually became an industrial enterprise known as Keene Engineering, the world’s largest and most widely recognized manufacturer of portable mining equipment. Some say that Ernie’s vision created an entire industry.
But time was running short for Ernie as tragically, some years later, while flying southward in southern California the small plane he was flying crashed and Ernie was killed. Ernie’s wife discussed the future of the Keene business with his son, Jerry, who decided after some deliberation, to accept the company’s leadership role and he took over running the business.
Jerry expanded the business by moving into larger facilities that were located in Northridge, California, north of Los Angeles. And he sold the diving equipment outlets to give singular focus on expanding the Keene mining equipment business turning it into a global mining equipment enterprise with a brand name known around the world. Today, from Africa to Asia, South America to the Middle East, anyone involved with gold mining knows the Keene name.
Jerry’s sons, Pat and Mark followed their father in managing the day to day business operations and today, following Jerry’s passing in 2017, both share the leadership of Keene Engineering. They also believe that grandfather Ernie would be quite proud of what the Company became, and where it is today. ... See MoreSee Less