Gold Country (part 4)

This is the stream where we panned for gold. I think we lasted about 10 minutes.

Really, I was just more interested in taking pictures.

I did find some pretty non-gold rocks, though, not that I kept any of them.

The path through China Garden.

Gold Country (part 3)

We spent two nights at Malakoff Diggins where we stayed in an actual miner's cabin that's still standing from sometime in the 1860-1880 range.

Yes, the chairs are new.

The cabin is located in what is left of the town of North Bloomfield which is located within Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park. They have camping, too, but staying in an actual miner's cabin was something we couldn't pass up.

And this... Well, this is a water cannon:

Hydraulic mining wasn't invented in Malakoff Diggins, but it really became a thing there. See, here's what happened:
You know how people thought during the gold rush that they were just going to "zip" over to California and find gold lying all over the ground and become rich? Of course, that wasn't true, but in Malakoff Diggins it was almost true. There was so much gold in the streams in the area that it took a couple of years for them to clean it all out. Except they realized there was always new gold in the streams after a rain, so they began searching around in the dirt, but that's hard work. Not that panning isn't hard work, but it's so much easier than digging around in the dirt. So someone asked the question: How do we get all of this dirt to the water so that we can sift all the non-gold away?

Which is where the water cannons came in. I'm not going to go into the whole process of hydraulic mining because the important part is that you aim the cannon at the mountain and wash everything down. Everything.

The bare rock, there, and everything below it was hydraulic mined. Prior to mining, the whole area was just like above the mining zone. All of the trees in the foreground are new growth from the last century, but let me make this clear: It's been more than 130 years since this happened, and the area still looks trashed.

Bear in mind, these are the "scenic"pictures, because I didn't take any pictures of the really horrible looking areas, because they were horrible looking. Of course, I wasn't thinking about this post at the time, or I would have.

All of this runoff caused problems. Lots of problems. Basically, it all ended up down around Sacramento and caused all kinds of flooding and damage. People weren't happy. Someone sued. It was one of the first, if not the first, environmental cases in American history, and the result was that in 1884 hydraulic mining was made illegal in the state of California.

Let me state again: It's been more than 130 years since hydraulic mining in the area of Malakoff Diggins was halted, and the land has still not recovered!

And I just want to point out that the kind of environmental regulation that Trump wants to do could very easily lead to more environmental disasters of this nature. Thousands of acres of farmland ruined every year on top of the destruction of some of the greatest wild areas of California. But, you know, if there's profit to be gained, Trump and his ilk don't care about any kind of destruction anyone else might face. Let the future deal with that. They're too old to care what kind of results there will be in 20-30 years.

Next time: More Malakoff Diggins, but only the pretty stuff.

Gold Country (part 2)

Day two of our trip through gold country took us up to Empire mine, one of the richest hard rock gold mines in California. It was also extremely informative. For one thing, gold mining is not what we think it is. At least, it's not what I thought it was, and I'm pretty sure my thoughts on it were not outside of mainstream thought.

Well, okay, one part is what I thought it was: gold panning. That's a form of placer (the "a" is like in cat) mining. We did that, by the way, but I'll get to that later. But mining for gold down in the ground is nothing like what I thought it was. There are no "veins of gold" just running through rock that you can go in and pull out. The gold is infused in quartz, so the process of hard rock mining is much more complicated because it involves bringing vast quantities of quartz out of the ground, smashing it up, and using dangerous chemicals like mercury and cyanide to draw the gold out. According to our tour guide, they got about 1/2 an ounce of gold per every TON of rock brought up. To me, that's just insane.

There's still plenty of gold down in the mine there, by the way, but, even with gold at over $1200/ounce, it now costs more to bring it up than they can make from doing it.

How about some pictures?

This is a three dimensional map of the mine and its tunnels.
The little paper signs  on top are the locations of various businesses and buildings.

I don't think you can see it in this picture, but there's a sign for Safeway and one for the post office.

Core samples.

A drill used for boring holes into the rock walls for the placement of explosives.

The mine administration building.

None of these trees existed when the mine was in operation.

The entire top of the mountain had been clear cut as fuel for running the pumps (to keep the mine shafts free of water) and to operate the stampers (the rock crushing machines).

William Bourn II had a vacation home and elaborate garden built on the mining site. He stayed there two weeks a year. Because it was there, it was also used to entertain guests, but the purpose of it was just to be there for those two weeks when Bourn was on site each year.

Those were the tennis courts off to the left.

And a few more shots of the mine grounds:

I believe the open area here is where the stampers used to be.

They ran non-stop (yes, 24/7), creating a constant pounding, which is probably why Bourn only visited for two weeks out of the year.

This is a piece of a small stamper, nowhere near the size of the ones the mine used.

A shot down the primary mine shaft.

You're looking down 100-150 feet.

Next stop: Malakoff Diggins.

Gold Country (part 1)

You know how ideas sometimes take a long time to develop? Well, my wife and I just had the culmination of one of those ideas. I think the genesis of this idea goes back a few years to when I did a series on abandoned places. It certainly put the idea of ghost towns into my head, at any rate. The idea of ghost towns and mining towns has bounced around in our house since I did those posts, which led to some discussion at some point about mining towns, all of which led to my wife and I taking a camping trip through gold country last week. It was educational, to say the least, because, no matter what you think you know, you never really know until you do the thing.

So what do you know about gold mining? I bet you "know" the same kinds of things I thought I knew. So let's talk about some of those things... But not today. Because our first stop on our trip was Sacramento, and I want to share some of those pictures with you.

First of all, they were throwing a protest when we got there:

That's the State Capitol building in the above picture.

The legend of California as it once was:

And we got a private tour of the old Secretary of State's office, which is kind of a funny store... but for some other time:

Then we hopped over to Fort Sutter:

No, it didn't get shrunk. That's a model.

That's Sutter's room, above.

For those of you who don't know, the gold discovery that kicked off the gold rush happened at Sutter's Mill. We went there, too, but that's a different location, so those pictures will come later. The one thing to know about it is that Sutter tried to keep the find quiet, not because he wanted the gold but because he knew what would happen if the word got out. Which is exactly what happened.

More pictures next week...