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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park (PH 6-3b)(2010) (5 pages)
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Page: of 5
7. the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain
range eroded over eons, ancestral
rivers carried and deposited gold along
their riverbeds. Malakoff Diggins State
Historic Park preserves and interprets the
1850s-1880s hydraulic mining era, when gold
seekers combed the Sierra foothills and
washed away whole mountains looking for
the precious metal.
PARK HISTORY
Native People
The park lies within the territory of the Hill
Nisenan. Nisenan territory once extended
from the lower reaches of the Yuba,
American and Feather Rivers to the east
bank of the Sacramento River and up to the
10,000-foot Sierra crest.
The Hill Nisenan lived in multi-family
villages or in extended-family hamlets.
Several hamlets might be grouped
together under one leader in the largest
village. Villages were located below 3,000
feet elevation, in small valleys and open
canyons. The families stayed in these
villages during the winter, but spread to
smaller camps—often at higher elevations
in rough terrain—from spring through fall to
collect and hunt food.
The Nisenan’s first contact with the
Spanish came in 1808, when General
Gabriel Moraga passed through the Nisenan
territory. The great malaria epidemic of
1833 wiped out many of the Hill Nisenan.
The final blow to Nisenan culture came with
the 1848 gold rush, when miners overran
their territory, bringing new diseases and
disrupting Nisenan harvest patterns.
The surviving Nisenan, known as the
Southern Maidu in the region of Nevada
County are seeking federal tribal recognition
as they preserve their ancestral heritage.
Miners Find Gold
Gold panning in Sierra streambeds quickly
exhausted the readily available gold in the
water. Miners sifted through stream deposits
of sand and gravel—a 6:
process called placer
mining—looking for gold.
Placer mining began
here in 1852 after a rich
gold deposit was found in
Humbug Creek, near the
South Yuba River. Each
placer miner staked claim
to a 30by 40-foot section
of ground. They would
Scoop and sieve gravel,
dirt and water from a
running creek or river into
flat-bottomed pans. They agitated this
mixture (known as alluvial deposits), then
poured off the water. The heavier gold, if
present, would gleam as flakes or nuggets
in the bottom of the pans.
A town called Humbug soon sprang
up to house the would-be miners. They
began devising more efficient methods
to separate more gold from larger
amounts of ore. These methods included
long slanted sluice boxes or “rockers.”
Miners added liquid mercury (also called
quicksilver) which created a gold-mercury
amalgam that settled to the bottom of
the devices while water, sand and gravel
ran off. Some mercury was inevitably lost
from the sluice and flowed downstream
with the sediments, but the miners
were efficient at using and re-using the
valuable mercury to aid in the recovery
and concentration of gold.
———
Aish pee miata wash gold from aed