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Collection: Directories and Documents > Historical Clippings
Newspaper Notes - 1850s (NN-18.5)(1850s) (336 pages)
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Page: of 336
mon with cradles, while many a long tom party took home
to their cabins at night a quart-pail full of gold.
Some of the pits and shafts failed to encounter pay dirt
but many of them struck it rich. From one 30 by 30 foot
claim $40, 000 was produced in less than a month, and in
the fall of 1850 hundreds of men who had come to California to "maketheir pile" left for their homes in the East
with substantial gains.
‘During the spring and early summer of 1850 several
thousand men toiled strenuously and many of them exce. edingly profitably, recovering gold from the shallow workings in the auriferous gravel stratum on the slopes of the
hillsnorth ofthetown. Here, while water was available,
_ ground sluicing was resorted to and pans and cradleswere.
generally superseded by Long Toms and board sluices.
Late in April however, the little streams in the ravines
and seasonal water courses gradually decreasedin volume ,
and miners, whohad been Washing their gravel at or near
their workings, were forced to tote the pay dirt down to
Deer Creek and cradle or sluice it there.
Faced by the alternative of carrying the gravel to running water or bringing water to their gravel, they chose .
the latter, and withthe grit and ingenuity for which these
men of the early gold rush days were justly noted they
proceeded to dig ditches to the workings. At first only
small ditches were dug to lead water from the ravines to
the workings but, asthe season advanced and these sources
diminished, the construciton of longer and larger ditches
-was undertaken. is
MANZANITA DIGGINGS, inthe 1850s and
early 1860s, hydraulic mining was instituted and drift gravel mining inaugurated.
This photo looks over Nevada City rooftops intothe hydraulic digging area atop
Manzanita Ravine. Photo courtesy of
H. P. Davis.
Ithas been estimated that from the coyote diggings and
from subsequent ground sluicing, drift mining and hydraulicing, the slopes north of this town and drifts under
Harmony Ridge have yielded more than 240, 000 ounces’
of gold, :
At$17 an ounce, the average price then paid by the ;
bank, and merchants of Nevada, about $4,000,000; at
present price of $35 per ounce, more than $7,000,000.
Of Coyoteville, now incorporated inNevada City Township, no evidenceremains.