USA > California > Amador County > History of Amador County, California, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 60
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On our return, late in the Summer of 1833, we found the valleys depopulated. From the head of the Sacramento to the great bend and slough of the San Joaquin we did not see more than six or eight live Indians, while large numbers of their skulls and dead bodies were to be seen under almost every shade tree near water, where the uninhabited and deserted villages had been converted into grave- yards; and on the San Joaquin river, in the imme- diate neighborhood of the larger class of villages, which the preceding year were the abodes of large numbers of these Indians, we found not only many
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THE ABORIGINES.
graves, but the vestiges of a funeral pyre. At the mouth of Kings river we encountered the first and only village of the stricken race that we had seen after entering the great valley; this village contained a large number of Indians temporarily stopping at that place.
We were encamped near the village one night only, and during that time, the death angel passing over the camping ground of the plague-stricken fugi- tives, waved bis wand, summoning from a little rem - nant of a once numerous people a score of victims to muster in the land of the Manitou; and the cries of the dying, mingling with the wails of the bereaved, made the night hideous in that veritable valley of death.
ANECDOTES OF THE INDIANS.
Captain Charlie was quite a character in his way. He had seen the foreign mining tax collector going about among the Chinamen collecting $4 a month from them, and he concluded to try it himself. Knowing the value of an impressive appearance, be put on, in addition to his rather short hickory shirt which constituted his usual dress, a naval coat much too small for his well-rounded body, which had the effect of hauling his arms back and giving a peculiar strut to his walk. He also put on a pair of brass-bowed spectacles. He managed to get a large book, a Bible as it was said, and with some pencils and paper he started out, backed by some half a dozen of his braves, to enforce the collection. IIis usual salutation was, " This my dirt, my countlee, my gold; you pay me folin miners tax," which they usually did without much dispute. He gave them, in exchange for their money, a paper full of pictures of arrows, bows, knives, and other warlike imple- ments. This continued for some days, when the officers of the county interfered and told Jack that he must not do it any more. Jack was not to be thwarted so easily, however.
One morning, when Bill Gist, Deputy Sheriff, col- lector of the foreign miners tax, was on his daily round, he visited a camp where he had every reason to think a large number of Chinamen were at work, but none were in sight. Captain Charlie was perched on a roek, singing in his happiest mood some of his triumphs over the Indians, or perhaps a love ditty to some fascinating squaw. " No-wa-ha-har Neshean. No-wa-ha-har Mokelke," etc.
Gist-" Good morning, Charlie."
Charlie-" Good day. No-wa-ha-har Neshean"- (in a most indifferent manner).
Gist-" Charlie, where are the Chinamen ?"
Charlie-" Do no; me no see. No-wa-ha-har, No- wa-ha-har Neshean."
Gist suspected something wrong, and told Charley that he knew where the Chinamen were, but he denied knowing anything about it, and kept his song going in a provokingly cool way. He thought he would leave and come some other time, but Captain Charlie was on the watch.
" Bill Gist, how much you give me show you twenty Chinamen ?"
" Five dollars," says Bill.
" You think Indian d-n fool, you catchlee eighty dollars; give five dollars? no-wa-ha-har, Neshean."
" Ten," says Gist.
" No-wa-ha-har, Neshean."
Gist offered fifteen, but Charlie was unmoved. Gist was about to leave, but Charley had not played all his trumps.
" You give me twenty dollars, make sixty dollars easy."
Gist offered the twenty, and had to pay the money down, for Charley had learned to distrust a white man's promise.
After Jack got his money he told Gist " to go into ehaplal," meaning the brush near by, "and go sleep; bime-by Chinaman he eome."
Gist hid himself in the bushes, and soon the Chinaman came to work, when he pounced them, and exaeted the eighty dollars in full. Soon afterwards, meeting Charlie, he learned that the rascal had hidden the Chinamen in a tunnel for twenty dollars, and after getting twenty out of him, had told the Chinamen to come out, saying to them,
" Folin miner tax-klector, he gone; no more come back."
The last seen of him he was showing his twenties with the remark that, " Chinamen heap good men. Catchee twenty dollars hide um; catchee twenty dollars find um; heap good Chinamen."
At another time, he undertook to run a boarding- house, at so much per week. Ile got a cabin, some flour and meat, table utensils, and a bell, and opened in style, ringing the bell three times a day; "all the same as white men." Ilis institution flourished until the following Sunday (pay-day), when it stopped for the reason, as Charley said,
" D -- n Indian no 'count, no pay."
Ile also engaged in mining. Ile found some good ground up on a side-hill, and undertook to carry water in a ditch to the place, but he failed to make the water run to it.
" White men make water run up hill, Indian ro can do. White man heap sabe."
CHAPTER XL. CANALS.
Kilham Ditches-Ham Ditch-Amador and Sutter Ditch-Wil- low Spring Ditch-Floating Lumber-Novel Passenger Boat -Empire Ditch-Amador Ditch-Buena Vista Ditch- Lancha Plana Ditch-The Nigger Ditch-Poverty Bar Ditch -Volcano Ditch-Cosumnes Water Company-The Amador Canal.
Soon after the coming of the miners, the want of water and the means to supply it were often the subjects of consideration. From turning the water out of a river or gulch to mine out the bed, to carry- ing it a mile or two to wash rich dirt, was but a small step. The season of 1850-51, was dry, little or no rain falling until April. During the Winter
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HISTORY OF AMADOR COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
many short ditches were ent, and many more con- templated. The Johnston family, who settled around the Gate, cut a ditch about one mile long in the Spring of 1851, from the north fork of Jackson to the gulch below the Kennedy mill. This is said to have been, at the time, the longest ditch in the county. The most important system of ditches in the vicinity of Jackson was inaugurated by Horace Kilham and his associates. The following able necount of them is furnished by Mr. II. L. Loveridge, who has been connected with them from their inception to the present time :-
KILHAM DITCHIES.
The first ditch constructed in the neighborhood of Jackson was for the conveyance of water to the placer mines in the vicinity of Hunt's gulch, Mur- phy's gulch and ridge, and Butte City, and was surveyed by two brothers by the name of Watkins, in the Fall of 1851, the head of the ditch beginning at a point some three and a half miles above the town of Jackson, on the south fork of Jackson creek. After the filing of a claim to the right of way, and the completion of the survey of the ditch, the con- struction work was deferred till the Spring of 1852, at which time Horace Kilham, William Lewis, Thomas Campbell, and - Merrill, purchased the interests of the Watkins brothers to the right of way for the ditch, as well as the right to diversion of the waters of the creek for its supply; and they at once commenced the work of construction, doing the principal portion of the labor themselves, com- pleting the ditch to the immediate vicinity of Scotts- ville, about the 20th of November of that year, which, by the ditch line, was seven miles in length, with an outlay, besides their own labor, of two thousand dollars, the most of the money being expended in the construction of flumes.
During the Winter and Spring of 1852, Kilham, Lewis and Merrill appropriated the most of their share of the water supply in mining in Kentuck and Rich gulches, located north and west of Gold hill, while Campbell sold his portion of the water to the miners about Scottsville and Butte City, the ditch being completed to the latter-mentioned locality in January, 1853. During the Spring of the same year a branch ditch was constructed to Murphy's gulch and ridge, where the owners of good paying claims were anxiously awaiting the coming of the much- needed water. The price charged for water during the first season of its introduction, was one dollar per inch per day.
Late in the Spring of 1853 Campbell and Lewis sold their interests in the ditch to Kilham and Mer- rill, and returned to their homes in the East, while Kilham and Merrill remained to reap a rich harvest of gold in their sales of water, which averaged, dur- ing the full water supply of eight months each season, for two years, five thousand dollars per month. In the Spring of 1855 Merrill returned to his old home in Wisconsin, in company with Braxton Davenport,
a prominent miner of Scottsville, to whom Merrill sold his interest in the ditch property. Davenport soon returned, and after a brief period disposed of his one-half interest in the ditch to Kilham.
One ditch being inadequate to supply the exten- sive mining region covered by its construction, a second ditch from Jackson creek, covering the same territory of mineral wealth, with an additional alti- tude of thirty feet, was soon considered to be a remunerative investment, and carly in the Spring of 1853 Major Cunningham, W. V. Clark, and -- Mun- son, commenced the construction of a ditch, with its head on the south fork of Jackson creek, about a mile and a half above the Kilham ditch, and on the middle fork, six miles above the town of Jackson; and pushing their work ahead with all possible speed, their ditch reached completion in May of that year. East of Tunnel hill, in the Alpi ranch, a spacious distributing reservoir was built, which has ever proved a most valuable water depository in connec- tion with the water supply of Butte basin and its surrounding country. From this reservoir to the point where the ditch heads on the south fork, the distance is seven miles, and from the head of the middle fork branch, fifteen miles; the cost of con- struction, not including the labor of its proprietors, was six thousand dollars. After the completion of this enterprise, water was sold at seventy-five cents per inch.
In the Fall of 1855 Mr. Kilham bought the Cun- ningham (so called) ditch property, and its retiring owners entered into the pursuit of mining-Cunning- ham and Munson remaining in the vicinity of Butte City for a couple of years, following their avocation successfully, while Mr. Clark became a mining pro- prietor in a wealthy mincral district of West Point, Calaveras county, where, we believe, he still resides. Cunningham and Munson left Butte City in the Spring of 1857, and became interested soon there- after in some extensive mining projects in Placer county.
Soon after Mr. Kilham assumed the sole proprie- torship of both of the Jackson creek ditches, he became involved in a lawsuit with a party on both the middle and south forks, in consequence of the attempt of some miners to divert the waters from the creeks above the head of his ditches to neigh- boring mining localities, from which places the water would flow into the streamns below where he could utilize it; and after a protracted siege of litigation, Kilham beat his water contestants, since which time no trouble of a similar character that is worthy of note has occurred.
And now, in order to make an intelligible connec- tion with all these ditch interests, it becomes neces- sary to digress a little for the moment and chronicle the addition of a new ditch enterprise-the Butte ditch-stretching its lengthy and rugged line twenty iniles above Tunnel hill, where it was fed by the cold, crystal waters of the north fork of the Mokel-
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CANALS.
umne river. This work was commenced in the Spring of 1856, and finished late in the Fall of the same year, at a cost of one hundred thousand dol- lars. The main trunk of the ditch was capable of conveying seven hundred inches of water, while its lateral branches were constructed to carry a sufficient quantity to accommodate the demands of the several mining sections which they supplied. Slabtown and Iowa Flat, hitherto "without water facilities for mining purposes, were, by this ditch, favored with an ample supply, and during the few years that these placers lasted, the water sales were a handsome income to the ditch company. The uniform price established for water was fifty cents per inch.
In the Spring of 1858, after six years of almost uninterrupted prosperity in the sales of water, Mr. Kilham sold all his ditch interests to the Butte Ditch Company for twenty-two thousand dollars, the sale including an orchard and vineyard belonging to the property, which was soon thereafter sold by its late purchasers to Dr. Samuel Page and Peter A. Martin for two thousand dollars. The price of water from the creek ditches was at this time dropped from seventy-five to forty cents per inch.
During the Summer of 1858, a suspension flume was constructed from a point half a mile west of C. J. Ruffuer's residence to the north end of Tunnel hill, a distance of thirty-three hundred feet, and which was, at its highest point from the surface of the ground, one hundred and eighty feet. The flume was built by Conrad & Holt for fifteen thousand dol- lars, and was not entirely a success to its contractors; for they warranted the structure to stand for one year from the date of completion, and a portion of it broke down before the expiration of the year, and the burden of rebuilding fell upon its contractors. The flume was repaired in the Spring of 1860, and stood till November, 1863, when it was entirely thrown down by a heavy wind-storm then prevailing. In consequence of the heavy expense incurred in bring- ing the water on Tunnel hill, the price established was fifty cents per inch-ten cents more than for other sections. In the year of 1861, water for dig- gings other than Tunnel hill, was reduced to thirty cents per ineh, and two years thereafter to twenty- five cents per inch. About this time the company beeame financially embarrassed, and the two mort- gages hanging over the property had to be paid, when three members of the company, Isaae Tripp, William Stickle, and A. M. Harris, who held the second mortgage, paid the first one and took the property. In the Fall of 1864, C. D. Horne pur- chased a fourth interest in the property, and at once became its active manager. In the Spring of 1866, water was again conducted to Tunnel hill by an eleven-inch iron pipe, but the sales of water there did not justify the expense incurred in conducting the water where the paying portion of the hill had before become so nearly exhausted.
In February, 1870, the river ditch was sold to the Amador Canal Company for twenty thousand dollars -the creek ditches not being included in the sale. The purchase of the Butte ditch by the canal com- pany was no doubt for the object of securing the water-right of the former, as no portion of the old river ditch has ever been used by the eanal company.
In a financial point of view, the Butte ditch was a. failure, for it never paid one-fourth the cost of its construction, for its water market was too limited to warrant the expensive ontlay of its building. But the Kilham ditches always proved a source of remun- erative profit to their owners. For several years past the lower creek ditch has not been in use, as the upper diteh is of sufficient capacity (five hundred inches) to furnish the needed water supply along its entire line-the water being used for mining and irrigating purposes. The price of water for several years past has been for the irrigation of alfalfa, twelve and a half cents, and for trees and vegetables, twenty cents per inch, while for mining the price varies from four to ten cents per inch, according to the quantity used.
The ownership of the entire ditch interests have, within the past few years, passed into the hands of Mr. C. D. Horne, under whose superintendence the property has been managed since his first connection with the ditch.
THE HAM DITCH.
This canal, so called from the name of the con- structor, the most costly and extensive, as well as unprofitable, of all the water projeets inaugurated in Amador county, was surveyed in 1852 by Alonzo Platt and - Hubbard. The intention was to supply all the middle and western portion of the county with water, at all seasons of the year, and lumber as well, for it was to be a flume, four feet wide at the bottom and five at the top, and three feet deep, with gradi- ents and curves that should permit the floating of lumber of any dimensions likely to be required in the mines. The project involved the building of several mills at the different branches of the north fork of the Mokelumne river. The first mill was put up on Mill creek, and the work inaugurated in 1854. The mill, a water-power, was a splendid piece of mechanism, running a sash saw, two hundred and fifty strokes a minute, cutting twenty-three thousand feet a day. In 1853 J. C. Ham took the contract to build eleven and a half miles of flume, at the following rates: Earth grading, fifty cents per yard; hard-pan, two dollars per yard; rock, five dollars per yard; lumber, eighty dollars per thousand; nails, twenty-five dol- lars per hundred weight.
The mill was constructed with edger and mortising saws, so that the entire work, except laying the flume, was done by the machinery. By these appli- anees eleven thousand feet could be put into the flume every day, a quarter of a mile being laid on a wager in five hours and a half. This mill was burned up in 1836, by a fire set to burn the slabs
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HISTORY OF AMADOR COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
und other trash which had accumulated around the mill. Water was carried to Aqueduct City, across the divido, in 1856. Much of the grading had been paid for in scrip, which entitled the holder to a pre- ferred right to water when the Hume should be finished. When the work was finished, the cost was estimated at three hundred and forty-four thousand dollars. Mill creek proving insufficient to supply the flume, the water failing in the Summer, an extension was determined on. To complete this extension the property was mortgaged to James Birch. for twenty-five thousand dollars. Being unable to pay this, the property was mortgaged to J. Mora Moss & Co., for fifty thousand dollars, the payment of the Birch lien with the accrued interest being effected in this way. The interest of the last named mortgage was fixed at one and one-half per cent. per month. The property eventually fell into the hands of Pioche, Bayurque & Co., who were said to be handling the money of Louis Napoleon. The project was disastrous to every one investing in it. The water scrip, or certificates for work done, pay- ยท able in water on the completion of the ditch, were not recognized by the last owners. The flume was not capable of carrying lumber to any extent, and damages and breaks by storms, failure of the mines, cost of necessary lateral branches, with expensive, perhaps extravagant management, soon bankrupted the company, and a few years since the property was purchased by Chas. Mclaughlin of San Fran- ciseo, for a few thousand dollars, or less than five per eent. of the original cost, which must have been near five hundred thousand dollars. The country at large derived some benefit from the distribution of water, which, however, was sold at high rates, being fifty cents an inch outlet, under six inches pressure. None of the originators made anything out of the affair. J. C. HIam, now an old man, who put such a portion of his active life as well as twenty- five thousand dollars in eash into the project, is comparatively poor, though still full of gigantic plans for utilizing the lumber forest of the Sierras.
THE AMADOR AND SUTTER DITCH
Was surveyed in the Spring of 1853, by Emanuel Wise and the Howard brothers, Lyman, Jerry, and Martin. The water was taken out of Sutter creek about four miles below Volcano, and carried to the towns of Sutter and Amador. The cost was about twenty-two thousand dollars. It did not prove a profitable investment, and was afterwards sold to a company of Italians for six thousand dollars, who got their money back in the first run of six months. The Keystone mining company now own it.
THE WILLOW SPRING DITCH.
Surveying commenced in 1831. The ground was broken the following year. The original proprietors were A. Wood, J. Riddle, John Cursner, Joe Jack- son, Fitzgeral and others, twenty in all, most of the proprietors being engaged in the work. The cost
was estimated at forty thousand dollars, but it swelled to eighty thousand dollars before completion. It took the water from the south fork of the Cosum- nes and distributed it through the north-western part of the county, including the camps of Plymouth, Forest Home, Puckerville, Arkansas diggings, etc. Porter, who was afterwards murdered and robbed while engaged in his duties, was made superintendent.
Though managed economically the property did not pay according to expectations, and in 1834 it was sold to William Ritter and John O'Brien, for about twenty thousand dollars, who enlarged the channel and extended it to the middle fork of the Cosumnes, at a cost of twenty-four thousand dollars more. In Junc, 1872, the property was purchased by Alvinza Ilayward & Co., for eighteen thousand dollars. The channel was enlarged to three feet on the bottom, five at the top, with a depth of three fect. Grades and curves were arranged with reference to floating lumber and mining timbers, for which purpose it proved well adapted, millions of feet having been successfully sent through to the works at Plymouth.
FLOATING LUMBER.
Thus after twenty years of experiment a part of the hopes of ditch projectors of carrying lumber was realized.
As this was the first successful operation of the kind in the county a few words as to the former expectations and failures may be permissible. The carrying of freight in artificial rivers is as old as the age of man. It is most successful in moderately level countries. The first great project of the kind in the United States was the Clinton ditch (as it was ealled by Thomas Jefferson, who was unsparing in his ridicule of it), which was projeeted three-quar- ters of a century since by the New York settlers from Holland, where they had been accustomed to see artificial rivers made the channels of a national com- merce. But Holland is a flat country. New York, though not flat, is by no means a Sierra Nevada. The canal meanders through valleys and occasionally along a gentle slope, and when an aqueduct, as at Little Falls, Rochester, or Lockport is required, it is constructed of granite in a substantial manner, and even then a break will sometimes occur which neces- sitates costly repairs. Let one, who has seen the successful artificial water channels, pass along the line of a ditch in the Sierras, and compare the searcely-flowing stream with only three or four inches grade to the mile, through a comparatively level country, with a stream in the Sierra Nevadas, diverted from its channel and carried around sharp ledges of rock, across ravines a hundred feet deep on a slender tressle work, winding its way until a dizzy height of hundreds of fect is attained, and the absurdity of trying to make it a channel for trans- portation will be apparent. The canal, to be suc- cessful as a supply of water, must have as mueh fall as is possible without washing the banks. A stick of timber turned crosswise in the ditch would, in
TON & REY S.F.
JAMES. LESSLEY.
TOMPSON & WEST PUBLISHERS, OAKLAND. CAL?
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CANALS.
five minutes, cause an overflow that might wash away a quarter of a mile of ditch, where digging a new channel on the grade was nearly impossible. The slight manner in which many of the ditches were constructed was the cause of many failures. It is even now no unusual thing to see a flume of a capacity of several hundred inches, standing on one leg away up on the side of a mountain, in such a precarious situation that a man with a family depending on him for support would have no right to walk over the shaky concern. The utility of ditches as a means of transportation is undoubted, and suc- cess will result from numberless trials and failures. Engineering will overcome the difficulties, and the Sierras will be induced to give up their treasures of sugar and other pines without the weary dragging through the dusty roads, now incident to the lumber trade.
NOVEL PASSENGER BOAT.
While the Ham flume was building it was pro- posed to carry passengers up as well as down by means of the stream. The passengers could, of course, float comfortably down in a boat. To get up stream was provided for. A car, running on a track, which was to be laid on the sides of the flume, was to have paddle wheels at each end, which, turned by the water, would turn the car wheels, attached to the same axle, and thus propel the carriage up the stream. The model was tried, but no reporters being permitted to witness the experiment, the result can only be conjectured.
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