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The northern part of the county is the basin of the Trinity River, and is auriferous. From the county a. The chief mining towns are Weaverville, c. South of Siskiyou and east of Trinity lies Shasta county, which is on an average forty miles wide from north to south and one hundred miles long, reaching to the eastern border of the state. There is a rich auriferous district about twenty miles square, in the vicinity of the town of Shasta, in the south-western part of the county.

The county has twenty-seven mining ditches, with a joint length of one hundred and forty-one miles, an average of five miles each. About one third of the county, in the south-western part of it, comprising that portion drained by the head waters of Feather River, is auriferous.


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It lies high above the level of the sea, and the work of mining is interrupted during a considerable portion of the winter, by cold, snow and ice. Hydraulic and tunnel claims in deep hills, furnish a large portion of the gold yield of the county. South of Plumas is Sierra county, which is fifty miles long from east to west, and twenty miles wide from north to south.

Though small, it is one of the richest mining counties of the state, and in proportion to the extent of its mining ground, is much richer than any other county. All its territory is four thousand feet above the sea level, at the lowest. Most of the mining is done in hydraulic and tunnel claims in deep hills.

Near the centre of the county is a mountain called the Downieville b. In there were eleven quartz-mills in Sierra county, of which seven are at the b. One of the most remarkable features of the placers of the state, is the blue lead, which was first discovered in Sierra county, and has been more thoroughly examined there than elsewhere. The "blue lead" is a stratum of blue clay very rich in gold. It is found deep under other strata. The general opinion is, that the blue lead occupies the bed of a large antediluvian river, which ran parallel with the Sacramento and about sixty miles eastward of it.


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It has been traced twenty miles or more, pa. It is often hundreds of feet in width, and extends for miles and miles, a thousand feet below the summits of high mountains, and entirely through them. Now it crops out where the deep channels of some of the rivers and ravines of the present day have cut it asunder; and then, hidden beneath the rocks and strata above it, it only emerges again miles and miles away. Wherever its continuity has been destroyed, the river or gulch which has washed a portion of it away, was found to be immensely rich for some distance below, and the materials of which the lead is composed are found with the gold in the bed of the stream.

It is evidently the bed of some ancient stream, because it is walled in by steep banks of hard bed-rock, precisely like the banks of rivers and ravines in which water now runs, and because it is composed of clay which is evidently a sedimentary deposit, and of pebbles of black and white quartz, which could only be rounded and polished as they are by the long continued action of swiftly running water.

The bed-rock in the bottom of this lead is worn into long smooth channels, and also has its roughness and crevices like other river beds. The lighter and poorer qualities of gold are found nearest to its edges, while the heavier and finer portions have found their way to the deeper places near the centre. Trees and pieces of wood, more or less petrified and changed in their nature, which once floated in its waters, are also every where encountered throughout this stratum. Much of this clay is remarkably fine and free from coa. It is said to be strongly impregnated with a. Fine gold is found among this clay, and the heavier particles beneath it, upon the bed-rock.

This stratum varies in thickness from eighteen inches to eight or ten feet, while the whole lead varies in width from a hundred and fifty to five hundred feet. It appears at Monte Christo, which is four miles above the high-lying Downieville, and over three thousand feet above it, and at Chapparal Hill on the side of a deep ravine; then at the City of Six, which is also on very high land, about four miles from Downieville, across the North Yuba.

Hittell, John S. (John Shertzer) 1825-1901

It is next found at Forest City, on both sides of a creek, and is there traced directly through the mountain to Alleghany Town and Smith's Flat, on the opposite side. There it is again cut in twain by a deep ravine. It crops out on the other side at Chip's Flat, where it has been followed by tunnels pa. Here it is obliterated by the Middle Fork of the Yuba, but it is believed to be again found at Snow Point, on the opposite side of the river, and again at Zion Hill, several miles beyond.

There is no reason for doubting that after thus reaching over twenty miles, it still extends further. Hundreds of tunnels have been run in search of it. Where the line it follows was adhered to, they have always found it, and have been well rewarded for their labor. Millions of dollars have been taken from this lead, and its richness, even in portions longest worked, is yet undiminished. Many of these claims will yet afford from five to ten or more years' profitable labor to their owners, before the lead itself within them is exhausted.

As in some of them quartz veins and poorer paying gravel have been found, many of them may be valuable to work from the top down as hydraulic claims. This idea that the blue lead occupies the bed of an antediluvian river is however not universally accepted.

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Avery, who has written numerous newspaper articles upon the mineral deposits, a. In reply to this, it is said that while a bluish stratum of clay similar to that of the blue lead is found over a wide district, that it is evidently different in origin from the blue lead itself, which is confined to a narrow bed, and marked by the signs found in all the other ancient river beds of the state.

One lode called the Cliff Ledge, is twenty-five feet wide; and another called the Aerial Ledge, is about three feet wide. In the Cliff Ledge, the paying rock averages about six feet in thickness next the foot wall. The average yield is eighteen dollars per ton.

The quartz is bluish white in color, and very hard when first taken from the lode, but on exposure to the air it slowly crumbles into sand. The a.

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There are twenty-two ditches in the county, with an aggregate length of nine hundred and fifty-two miles, an average of forty-three miles each. The most important ditch, called "Bovyer's,". The diggings at Timbuctoo are in a deep hill, which is washed away by the hydraulic process. West of Yuba and Plumas counties lies b. There are sixty-four mining-ditches, with an aggregate length of five hundred and eighty-three miles. The bars and beds of Feather River were once very rich, and some of the most extensive enterprises of river mining in the state have been undertaken within the limits of b.

The greatest flume ever built in California was that of the Cape Claim Company, near Oroville, in It was three quarters of a mile long and twenty feet wide, and furnished employment for two hundred and fifty men from May till November. North of Oroville is a "table-mountain" with a top of basalt, covering a rich deposit of auriferous clay. Within its limits the tom, sluice, under-current sluice, and crinoline hose were invented, and the ditch and hydraulic power were first applied to placer-mining; and quartz-mining was first undertaken extensively.

In there were thirty-two quartz-mills in the county, and twenty-eight mining-ditches, with an aggregate length of three hundred and ninety-four miles. No part of the mineral region of the state is better supplied with water than Nevada county. The richest quartz district is in the vicinity of Nevada City, which has fifteen mills, and Gra. The great Allison mine, which has the richest lode in the state, is in Gra.

The quartz mines here are much troubled with water, and during the winter of , many of the mills were compelled to stop for weeks until the shafts could be drained by steam engines, after having been filled by a long and heavy rain. The annual gold yield of Gra. North San Juan has the finest hydraulic claims, and Sweetland the largest tail-sluices.

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The Eureka Lake Ditch Company has more ditching and water than any other company in the state. Their main ditch is seventy-five miles long, and there are one hundred and ninety miles of branches, making a total of two hundred and sixty-five miles, which have cost nine hundred thousand dollars. This is a very cheap and expeditious way of washing, but it is not applied extensively. It is used to the most advantage for washing where the water is abundant for only a few weeks after heavy rains, and where it would not pay to erect large sluices.

A few cobble-stones should be left or thrown at intervals in the bed of the ground-sluice to arrest the gold, for if the bed were smooth clay, the precious metal might all be carried off. Quicksilver is not used in the ground-sluice. After the dirt has all been put through the ground-sluice, it is cleaned up in a short board-sluice, or a torn. Long Tom. The torn or long torn, an instrument extensively used in the Caiifornian mines in and , but now rarely seen, is a wooden trough about twelve feet long, eighteen inches wide at the upper end, and widening at the lower to thirty inches, with sides eight inches high.

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It is used like a board-sluice, but has no riffle-bars, and at the lower end its bottom is of sheet-iron, perforated with holes half an inch in diameter. This sheet-iron is turned up at the lower end, so that the water never runs over there, but always drops down through the perforated sheet-iron or riddle, into a little riffle-box, containing transverse riffle-bars. A stream of water of about ten inches makes a" tom-head" or the amount considered necessary for a torn through the torn, which has a grade similar to that of a board-sluice.

The dirt is thrown in at the head of the torn, and a man is constantly employed in moving the dirt with a shovel, throwing back such pieces of clay as are not dissolved, to the head of the torn, and throwing out stones.

Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining by John S. Hittell

The torn may be used to advantage in diggings where the amount of pay-dirt is small and the gold coarse. The riffle-box contains quicksilver, and as the dirt in it is kept loose by the water falling down on it from the riddle above, a large part of the gold is caught ; but where the particles are fine, much must be lost. The rocker or cradle is still less than the torn and inferior in capacity. It bears some resemblance in shape and size to a child's cradle, and rests upon similar rockers. The cradle-box is about forty inches long, twenty wide, and four high, and it stands with the upper end about two feet higher than the lower end, which is open so that the tailings can run out.

On the upper end of the cradle-box stands a hopper or riddle-box twenty inches square, with sides four inches high. The bottom of this riddle box is of sheet-iron, perforated with holes half an inch in diameter. The riddle-box is not nailed to the cradle-box, but can be lifted off without difficulty. Under the riddle is an " apron " of wood or cloth, fastened to the sides of the cradle-box and sloping down to the upper end of it.

Across the bottom of the cradle-box are two riffle-bars about an inch square, one in the middle, the other at the end of the box. With the water and the motion the dirt is dissolved, and carried down through the riddle, falling upon the apron which carries it to the head of the cradle- box, whence it runs downward and out, leaving its gold, black sand, and heavier particles of sand and gravel behind the riffle- bars. The man who rocks a cradle learns to appreciate the fact, that the " golden sands " of California are not pure sand, but are often extremely tough clay, a hopperful of which must be shaken about for ten minutes before it will dissolve under a constant pouring of water.

Many large stones are found in the pay-dirt. Such as give an unpleasant shock to the cradle, as they roll from side to side of the riddle-box, are pitched out by hand, and after a glance to see that no gold sticks to their sides, are thrown aw r ay ; but the smaller ones are left until the hopperful has been washed, so that nothing but clean stones remain in the riddle, and then the cradler rises from his seat, lifts up his hopper, and with a jerk throws all the stones out. The water and the rocking are both necessary. Without the water, the dirt could not be washed ; and without the rocking, the dirl would dissolve very slowly, and the gold would most of it be lost.

The rocking keeps the dirt in the bottom of the cradle more or less loose, so that the particles of gold can sink down in it, whereas if the cradle stood still, the sand there would almost immediately pack down into a hard floor, over 19 which the gold would urn almost as readily as over a board.