USA > California > Placer County > History of Placer county, California > Part 44
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Assessments were levied to prosecute the work. and arrangements made for fluming the greater part of their ground.
Other companies, both above and below the Amer- ican Falls' claims, are not behindhand, but are act- ively engaged in preparing to work on a much larger seale than has ever yet been done on the river There will be one continuous flume from Main Bar, running down the stream more than five miles, along a number of claims that are but just fairly prospected.
November 3, 1:57 .- Rain has commenced in earn- est, and the rise of the rivers carried away the flumes and tools of the miners on the American and its tributaries. This closes river mining for the season disastrously
DRY DIGGINGS.
River and bar mining could be carried on success fully only in the summer or dry season, and the ravines, gullies and high banks were sought for the winter's work. These localities were. therefore. called " dry diggings." The large foot-bill area west of. and about Auburn constituted one of the richest and most extensive sections of dry diggings in the gold-mining region. and were first known as the " North Fork Dry Diggings." Recent reports speak of these as " Wood's Dry Diggings. 'but we have no early records of the name, nor do we recollect having heard it so called in 1$49. With the abundant rains of 1849 every ravine contained a rivulet, and in every ravine was gold. Here the miners gathered and with pan and rocker prospered. The depressions of the higher mountains were called canons and gulches. and there. too. the miners found dry diggings. But with the summer of 1-50 and the dry winter follow- ing, the dry diggings lost their popularity. They contained, however, an abundance of gold, and many miners stayed by them. waiting for the water to come or if more than usually enterprising, carting the anriferous dirt to a spring or stream, where with the pan or rocker they could wash out the gold. Some would shovel the dirt out of the water channel on to the bank. in anticipation of the water coming, some- times finding lumps of gold sufficient to pay for their
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subsistence. These lumps were then called " speci- mens," the word " nugget," now universally adopted, coming from Australia. The miner of a later date, in 1851 or '52, would have brought the water to his dirt, or gulch, and there picking it to pieces, would have washed, or " ground sluiced" it away, and gathered the gold from the bed-rock, or washed only the concentrations in the rocker.
IMPROVEMENTS IN MINING-LONG TOM.
The miners of Nevada County were the first to take advanced steps in mining. There in the latter part of 1849, or early in 1850, some Georgia people introduced the "long tom." This is a trough of boards about twelve feet long, eight inches deep, twelve or fifteen inches wide at the head. and widen- ing to twenty-five or thirty at the lower end. The wide portion terminates in a riddle of perforated sheet iron so curved that nothing goes over its end or sides, requiring a man to attend it with hoe and shovel to stir the gravel and water as they enter. wasbing all that is possible through the riddle, and with the shovel throwing the coarser gravel away. Beneath the sheet iron is a box with riffles, where the gold is retained with a small quantity of sand from which it is separated by washing in a pan or rocker. A constant stream of water runs through the tom, into which one or more men can shovel the dirt.
MINING DITCHES.
To use the " tom' led to the construction of the mining ditch. Water must be turned from the stream to enter the tom, and thus the advantage of such a diversion was seen. and the system extended. The first ditch in California for mining purposes was made at Coyote Hill. in Nevada County, in March, 1850. This was about two miles long, and proved a financial success. The first ditch in Piacer County was constructed by H. Starr and Eugene Phelps, at Yankee Jim's, in 1831, to convey the water from Devil's Cañon to wash the dirt on their claims in a long tom. The tom and the ditch soon led to the greatest improvement of all, the " sluice." Some miners at Nevada placed a trough to carry the water to their long tom, and to save trouble threw their dirt into the trough. where the flowing water would carry it into the tom. The gold was found to remain in the trough. and thus it was discovered that the riddle and the man to attend it were unnecessary, and the trongh became the sluice.
THE SLUICE.
The trough which developed the sluice was made of two boards nailed together in the form of the letter V. and at a later date has become the V flume for carrying lumber. Soon the sluices were more systematically constructed, being of three boards, the bottom one twelve inches in width and the sides ten. The bottom boards were usually cut two inches narrower at one end than the other. in order that a
number might conveniently bo set in line, the smaller end of one lapping in the wider end of the other. thus making a line of sluices of any desired length These were set at any such grade as was necessary to create such a current of water as to carry through the dirt thrown into them. Other sluice boxes for stationary work were made so as to butt against each other, and the joint securely fastened. From the single cleat nailed across the bottom to catch the gold, numerous improved " riffles " were made, and patents obtained for many. Among the devices were slats, or strips of board, lying across or lengthwise of the sluice, sometimes covered with iron to prevent their too rapid wear; planks with many auger-holes were used, and many other devices to protect the bottom of the sluice and afford lodgement for the gold, while at the same time it should offer as little obstruction as possible to the passage of the water and gravel. The gold, in the small operation of the ante-hydraulic times, quickly sought the bottom, and in a line of sluices of twenty yards in length, little ot the precious metal escaped. The gold and some gravel would settle in the riffles, which at night would be taken out, the matter remaining carefully gathered and washed in a pan, leaving the gold clean and pure, with the exception of a small quantity of black sand, which was afterwards removed by a mag- net, being ferruginous and quickly attracted, or blown away by the breath. If quicksilver were used. this would be gathered in a similar manner, strained through a piece of canvas, and the resulting amal- gam heated, either openly on a plate of iron or in a retort made for the purpose, and all the quicksilver adhering to the gold burned or evaporated away
THE SLUICE FORK.
The sluice called for the invention of the " sluice fork," a fork of ten or a dozen tines, used to separate the coarser from the finer gravel when the current was not sufficiently strong to carry all away. This was a convenient and useful implement. and several styles were patented.
RIFFLES
As mining improved the sluices were made larger. until they have become large flumes, or tail races six or eight feet broad and proportionately deep. extending, if necessary and the ground permits, a mile in length, carrying a torrent of 1.000 inches or more of water loaded with the gravel from the hydraulic bank. These large sluices also have vari- ous styles of riffles. In some scantling were fixed in frames and laid longitudinally with the box in others blocks of six or more inches in thickness, sawed from large trees and fastened in the bottom of the sluice, and in others a pavement of bowlders was laid, like the cobble pavement of streets Such riffles are expected to remain through weeks or months of washing, as to " elean up " and replace is a formidable undertaking.
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HISTORY OF PLACER COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.
GRIZZLY AND UNDER-CURRENTS.
In connection with the large sluice is the " grizzly " and the "under-current." The grizzly is to the large sluice what the sluice fork is for the smaller, that is, to separate the large bowlders from the finer gravel, and is made of bars of iron, usually railroad iron. The finer matter passes through the grizzly, and is caught in the under-current. which is a broad- ened sluice, sometimes twenty feet in width, set at a light grade, permitting a gentle current over it, flow- ing a convenient distance and re-entering the main sluice. The grizzly is usually placed where a fall can be obtained, the mass of bowlders and cemented gravel passing over, breaking up the latter in the fall and freeing the gold, to be caught in other sluices and under-currents.
Sometimes when several claims run their " tail- ings" into the bed of a stream, a "tail-sluice" is constructed, through which the debris runs, and from which often a large revenue is obtained.
SLUICE PAVEMENTS.
Great efforts have been made, and numerous patents obtained, for providing improved and efficient sluiee bottoms, or pavements for sluices, as upon the efficiency of the sluice depends, in a great measure, the suceess or failure of the mine. Condemned car- wheels have been used and found to answer the pur- pose well, as the numerous irregular ereviees fur- nished excellent riffles, and they were not quickly worn out. Old iron T rails, after serving their pur- pose on the railroad, make good bottoms, laid longi- tudinally in the sluice, and are used where they can be obtained cheaply. A trial of these against wooden blocks was made in the Morning Star Hydraulic Mine, at lowa Hill, in 1877. Three sections were laid, of about sixty-five feet each, the first at a suffi- cient distance from the bank to insure a constant current, laid with the ordinary wood blocks; the second section with old iron rails, and the third with blocks like the first. The rails proved more lasting and far more effective as riffles, as the rail section saved more gold than both the others together.
DRIFT MINING.
Drift mining in California was first termed . coyot- ing." from the work being done under ground, as royotes were supposed to dig their holes. In 1849, the miners in the dry diggings at Nevada would sink shafts to the depth of fifteen or twenty feet to the bed-rock. and then, rather than throw off the whole surface, would " coyote," as it was called, from the bottom of their excavation, and this was the begin- ning of drift mining. From this circumstance the locality became known as Coyote Hill, which name it bears at the present time.
Drift mining is most extensively carried on in Placer and Sierra Counties, where it forms a most important and valuable industry. Many of the gravel deposits are overcapped by basalt and other
1
matter from ancient voleanoes, leaving far in the mountain the channel of some former river or glazier that contains the auriferous gravel. At points these deposits are exposed, leading the miner to search beneath the overlying matter, and thus be bas learned that where the basalt forms the mountain top a gravel channel lies beneath. To reach this long tunnels from some bordering eañon are requi- site, both for gaining access to the channel and to drain the water therefrom. When the gravel is thus reached it is mined out, the process being called " dritting," the superinenmbent mass being held in place by timbers placed beneath and by pillars of the natural matter left standing.
This branch of mining is most extensively prose- euted in the region lying between the North and Middle Forks of the American River, commonly designated as the " Divide," the gravel or mining area comprising about 250 square miles. This sec- tion was prospected in 1849, and contained an active population in 1850. Gold was found near the surface, but the miners soon tried greater depths, and were thus led to the deep deposits on the bed-rock, when, following the example of those of Nevada, com- menced the system of drifting. In 1853 tunneling commenced, and since then a great many have been bored, of which more will be found in subsequent pages of this book.
HYDRAULIC MINING.
Again the improved method is first made known in Nevada County. In June, 1853, Col. Wm. Mc- Clure, an enterprising gentleman of Yankee Jim's, a miner and stoekholder in a diteh supplying the locality with water, heard reports of a more effective system of mining then adopted in Nevada County, and he therefore visited that progressive section to learn more of the novelty. He found the miners washing the gravel by turning against the bank a stream of water directed by a eanvas hose of four or five inches diameter, and a sheet-iron pipe, or nozzle, as a fireman would direct water upon a burn- ing building. This stream, first of twenty-five or fifty inches of water. coming under pressure of forty to sixty feet from a ditch and penstock on the hill above, played against the base of the gravel bank would wash it away, leaving the mass above to fall, and in this manner a large amount ofearth was moved, and. by the water, carried down the sluices placed in trenches in the bed-rock ready for its reception. The work being done by water, the system took the name of " hydraulie." This method was first adopted in 1852 by Mr. Edward E. Mattison, a native of Connecticut, and was one of the most important inventions ever left unpatented. The manner of applying this method was then much simpler and less effeetual than at the present day. Leading from a ditch to gain pressure was a trough set upon slight trestle, looking something like a line of telegraph poles, hence it was called a " telegraph," conveyed the water to a penstock, which was prob-
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PHOTOGRAPHED BY J. M JACOBS
F, GBisbee
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ably a barrel or a few boards nailed together, making a funnel-shaped box, and to this was attached a hose made of heavy canvas leading into the gravel pit. terminating in a rude nozzle of sheet iron.
This method was approved by Colonel MeClure, and he hastened to introduce it in Placer County. with hose, "telegraph," penstock, and sheet-iron nozzle, as he had seen it in Nevada. So effective a system was not long to remain without improve- ment, and many inventors obtained patents for the changes they effected, who had not the genius to conceive the original plan, and thus profited more than the real inventor. Rubber hose and nozzles, with brass couplings, distributing boxes and iron penstocks soon followed, and these were succeeded by the great iron pipe, leading direct to a Craig's " Monitor," a " Dictator, " a " Giant," or other patent nozzle, passing a stream of 1,000 inches of water from a pressure of 200 feet high, with a force that will send a half-ton bowlder whirling over the rocks.
So powerful is this stream that an ordinary briek building would quickly yield to its force. Yet so cemented is the gravel in some mines that the water abrades it very slightly. To facilitate the washing a tunnel is run into the gravel at the base of the bank, and when a sufficient distance is reached, pro- portionate with the depth of the mass, cross drifts and chambers are excavated, and in these powder is placed, fuse or wires laid, the opening refilled and powder exploded, jarring and loosening the gravel so that it may be more readily attacked by the water. From a few hundred pounds to fifty tons of powder are used in a single bank-blast of the above descrip- tion.
To open such a mine requires a long tunnel from some neighboring depression through the rim rock of the gravel channel at a considerable depth below the bed, and at such a grade as will allow the flow of water through, as in the tunnel must be the sluices through which the gravel is washed. This mining is available where volcanic matter does not overlie the gravel, and where the gold is generally diffused throughout the entire mass.
Dutch Flat, Gold Run, Iowa Hill, Yankee Jim's, Michigan Bluff, Todd's Valley and Bath are the principal localities where hydraulic mining is carried on, although there are large and important hydraulic claims in other parts of the county.
HYDRAULIC MINING AT GOLD RUN
Mr. Petee, of the Geological Survey of this State, in 1871 made an estimate of the placer mines of Gold Run District. He estimated that the superficial area of the placers was 860 acres; that about one-half had been worked over, but not worked out, as the bed-rock bad been reached at only one extremity; that about 43,000.000 cubic yards of dirt had been removed by hydraulic process, and that the gross product of the district taken from statistics, was
82,000,000. The average yield. therefore, had been but fonr and a halt' cents per cubic yard of earth. and yet hydraulic mining has been carried on to a large protit. In this work ouly the surface dirt had been removed. there being from one to two hundred feet of gravel and cement underlying the excavation.
This was expected to be much richer, and to bring up the average yield, and at the same time put larger profits into the pockets of the operators. This statement is suggestive of the value of hydraulic mining. In a cubic yard there are twenty-seven solid feet. In a common wagon load there are thirty-two feet. In this Gold Run dirt there was then about five and one-third cents to the wagon load. Yet 43,000,000 cubic vards. yielding $2.000 .- 000 were worked to a profit, and the principal cost in this operation, probably, was the water. . From 1863 to 1881, inclusive, the yield of the Gold Run mines aggregated 87.425,000.
CEMENT MILLS.
Usually the action of the bank-blast, the force of the hydraulic stream, the grinding in the sluices, the falls and dumps sufficiently break up the cemented gravel as to liberate all the gold, but there are mines where the gravel is solidly pressed and cemented together and rich in gold, then it becomes profitable to crush it under stamps or other machin- ery, and for this purpose numerous mills were erected and various devices conceived, patented and put in operation.
The ground had become solidified almost as firmly as the hardest granite, requiring a strong blow of pick or drill to make an impression. This hardening had been effected by the chemical action of iron, sulphur and water, under great pressure through extreme changes of temperature and through ages of time. While the currents and glaciers of the azoic age were grinding the quartz and depositing the debris of bowlders, pebbles, sand, gold and clay in the channels, iron, sulphur and other active agents were intermixed with all, though naturally seeking the lower levels with the percolations of the water, and in later ages volcanoes poured over the deposit its floods of burning ashes and molten rock. pressing and heating the matter beneath. But it is not to volcanie action that the lower strata of cemented gravel can be attributed, as they appear in hills undisturbed by such forces, and in layers at various depths. Where the stratum is composed of quartz. pebbles and sand, triturated pyrites of iron and sulphur, the cement is blue, and is called the "blue lead," and where sulphur is not so prominent but iron predominates, the cement is of a reddish color. This cement, particularly the blue, made greatly of slate quartz and pyrites, is generally rich in gold. and although difficult to break out of the original bank, quite readily separates under the stamps and is thus rapidly worked. While the theory obtains that all the gold originally came from the quartz, and the
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HISTORY OF PLACER COUNTY CALIFORNIA.
coment gravel accompanying the gold is almost. entirely composed of quartz, it is exceedingly rare that a quartz bowlder or pebble of the great gravel ranges contains any of the precious metal.
This stratum of coment or blue load is often from ten to twenty feet in depth, and oxtonding across the channel a broadth of 500 or 1,000 feet. It very rich or parts of it rich, it is profitable to subject it to the stamps, which is rapidly done, there being no effort to crush it to an tino a pulp as is required in working quartz. The gold from such crushing is but partly saved in the mill, but the tailings aro washed into the sluices and go with the main body of gravel from the mine. The value of the gravel thus worked varios greatly, it may be $2.00 or $20.00 per cubic yard.
Various dovicos besides the stamp mill bave boon made for crushing the coment. A coment gravel mill was constructed at Wisconsin Hill in 1878, which consisted of a cylindrical tubo thirty feet long set on a slight grade, with four-inch iron bars equi distant The coment was fed into this cylinder, which slowly revolved, the tino dirt and gold settling into the interstices, and the large bowlders rolling out at the lower end. The capacity of the mill was 200 tons a day.
QUARTZ MINING
Placer County, so rich in gravel mimng, was laggard in developing its veins of quartz. In other counties rich placers in the streams or gulches were supposed to lead to a rich quartz voin, but here they led to the great deposits in the hills West of Auburn in the flats and ravines below, was found a quality of gold very different from that of the rivers or great hills to the east ward, having more silver in its alloy, and therefore of several dollars less value per ounce. This could not be from the " Dead Blue Rivor," which some writers have attributed as the source of all the lower placers The various ravines, an Auburn, Baltimore, Secret, Dutch, and Miner's, were rich in gold, and extended ten miles or more toward the valley The source of this wide spread deposit was at last found in the many quartz veins about the heads of these ravines, the gold from which corresponding to a great degree with the gold of the subjacont placers, thus appearing to prove that the gold of the alluvial or drift deposit, was nativo to the earth near the locality where found, and that glacial action had formed the placers.
Gold-bearing quartz was found noar Ophir at an early day, and was worked to some extent by Mexicans in morfars and arastras. All the mining done by them was merely in breaking out the crop- pings, working only the richest. The first mill built in the county was in 1851, at Secret Diggings, the mine being on the Rosecranz quartz voin. In September. 1852, the Croesus Hill Quartz Mining Company commenced the erection of a mill of ten stamps, driven by a steam engine of thirty-tivo- horse power. The site of this was about one mile west of
Auburn, and it began work on the 26th of January, 1853. The result of the workings of these pioneer mills is not recorded, but from the fact that quartz- mining and milling languished, the inference is that the NUOCONN was not great.
In 1855 a remarkably rich body of gold-bearing quartz was discovered in Shipley Ravine, near Gold Hill, and quite an excitement followed. The vein was traced a long distance, and locations made cov ering an extent of nhont four miles. At Stewart's Flat, about five miles southwest of Auburn, rich quartz was discovered and mills erected in 1858. In December of that year there were six quartz mills in operation in the region west of Auburn. This has been the principal quartz mining region of Placer County, and, although the business has been exceedingly variable, sometimes dying out entirely. it has periodically revived, and a large amount of bullion has been produced.
East of Auburn, gold-bearing quartz was found in the early years of mining, and, in July, 1855, MOsers. Walsh & Mc Murtrie, of tirass Valley, built a quartz-mill on the Pennsylvania Lead, about. eight miles east of Wisconsin Hill. This was the pioneer mill of the region, and was known as Strong & Co.'s Mill, afterwards known as the " Pioneer."
In the Assessor's report for 1855, this is referred to as the first successful quartz mining and milling in Placer County. In the same year, says the report, " Messrs. Hancock & Wilson have built, and are successfully operating, a quartz-mill at Sarahs- ville ( Bath ), near Michigan Blutl. These gentlemen are the successful pioneers in the mode of mining which is to succeed, eventually, placer digging. When these old surface washings shall have been forgotten, the sound of the quartz stampers will be heard from almost every little ledge which the miner now daily passes by without notice." In the following year the mill orected by Strong & Co. was taken down and rebuilt, the new one having twenty four stamps, each weighing 1,200 pounds, and was regarded as the most effective mull in the State.
Quartz veins Noam the county through its entire extent, where the bed-rock is attainable, from the Sacramento Valley to the eastern limit. Hundreds of these have been prospected, and found to contain gold, and a large number have, at one time or another, been the scene of active mining operations, yielding largo sums, and then abandoned. Some at. times yield very profitably, but the paying body. or bonanza, becoming exhausted the mines are closed. The quartz veins have almost universally a trond slightly cast of north and west of south, dipping to the east at an angle of about seventy or eighty degrees. In width they vary from two inches to many foet, five to ten probably being the most usual, but instances of as great a width as 200 feet are mentioned. The number, extent, and value of these can only be statod indefinitely, unless in a descrip- tion of each particularly. East and west veins sometimes occur.
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