The California Gold Rush (continued)
An area along a stream where large deposits of rock and sand
build, called a bar, was one of the best places to stake a claim;
and, frequently a large mining camp developed on the bar. Since
foothill streams often overflowed their banks during the rainy
season, deposits of placer gold could also be found well back from
the water's edge. While many small gulches only had water running
through them during rainy periods, the flow was sufficient to form
significant placer deposits along the stream’s length, so that many
of these gulches were heavily dotted with individual diggin’s and
small camps.
When placer gold is taken from its resting place, it is accompanied
by significant amounts of worthless dirt, sand, and gravel, called
pay-dirt by miners. In order to extract the gold from the other
valueless materials, miners used the same principal that created the
placer deposits in the first place--the movement of water.
Nearly everyone has seen a demonstration of panning, where excess
sand and gravel is tossed out by a vigorous shaking of the pan,
leaving heavy particles of gold lying on the bottom in a small swirl
of black sand. While the process is much more difficult than it
appears, it is easily learned by experience.
Devoting about ten minutes to each pan, the average 49er washed out
about fifty pans of pay-dirt during a good day, and extracted a
total of $7.00 to $15.00 worth of gold. But panning was tedious
labor, requiring constant digging and squatting, and long hours
working in cold water. Among the first devices that helped to
diminish these problems and speed up the recovery of gold was called
the cradle or rocker. By rocking the cradle vigorously back and
forth, the lighter sand and gravel washed out, leaving the gold
lodged behind small boards, called riffles, that were attached
inside. Using this device, large quantities of pay dirt could be
washed in a shorter amount of time, making a day's work much more
profitable.
Still, the cradle had to be constantly rocked by hand, and miners
soon came upon an idea to let a steady stream of water do the work,
in a large, stationary version of the rocker called a long tom.
Placed in a small stream or at the end of a water ditch constructed
specifically for the purpose, water rushing into one end of the tom
carried pay dirt over a series of riffles and out the other end,
again leaving the placer gold trapped behind the riffles.
As the Gold Rush progressed, some miners began to realize that, if
deposits of placer gold arrived at their location by being washed
downstream, then somewhere upstream there had to be a source -- the
"mother" vein from which all this gold came. Exploration eventually
led to the discovery of outcroppings of rock, primarily quartz,
which contained veins of gold. Although this was the "lode" gold
miners had been searching for, the gold was firmly embedded in hard
rock, and mining it required laborious chipping, pulverizing, and
washing.
California gold mining became a commercial enterprise in the late
1800s, with many mines being run by large corporations. The business
reached its peak in 1940, when nearly $51 million in gold was
extracted and milled from the state's mines. Just two years later,
due to the demands and restrictions of the war effort, all the mines
of California were shut down by Executive Order L208. Only a small
percentage of California's gold mines reopened when the order was
lifted in 1945.
Geologists estimate that 97% of the gold that existed in California
at the start of the Gold Rush has yet to be mined. The high cost of
mining and milling, plus stringent rules regarding milling methods
and waste disposal, have made gold mining unappealing and ultimately
unprofitable.
Today, the world's major gold mines are primarily in South Africa,
although there are still a few productive gold mines in the United
States. Ironically, most modern California gold mines now make more
money from tourism than from gold.
Portions of the above were extracted from my book, Between the Rivers. Read a California miner's first hand account of the Gold Rush at the Eyewitness to History website.
