Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 055-2 - April 2001 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 8 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-12 06:59:16 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:01 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:01

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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I was dismayed to learn that Gold Country was not littered with gold. In many towns there were 12 men for every woman, and in some 100 men for every woman. Many men who arrived in hopes of returning to his family rich failed to do so. I was disgusted to find tempers short and hot. People engaged in activities that they would never have engaged in back home. Gambling, gun fighting, knife fighting, drinking and lynching were all forms of entertainment, while painted ladies readily sold their “feminine touch.” I left town on the next stage, a week after my arrival. Let me tell you, that was a week too long for a lady such as myself in a town like that. Grass Valley in 1894 by “A Cornish Girl” [The following account of a visit to Grass Valley appeared in the September 13, 1894, edition of The West Briton, one of the principal newspapers in Cornwall, the southwestern-most county of England. Many of the hard-rock miners in Nevada County learned their trade in the deep tin and copper mines of Cornwall, at one time the most extensively mined region in the world. The author, signing herself only as “A Cornish Girl,” is unknown, but was probably the wife or daughter of a Cornish mining manager who toured various mineral districts in America, perhaps on behalf of British investors. As well as writing of her visit to Grass Valley, she also wrote reports from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Butte, Montana, and Virginia City, Nevada. Anyone familiar with Nevada County history will recognize the references to the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad, which threaded tunnels and trestles between Colfax and Nevada City and Grass Valley, and the mentions of various gold mines that operated before the turn of the century and in some fashion left their names on the landscape. She also refers to Porthtowan (in Cornish “porth” means a cove or harbor, and “towan” refers to sand), a village on the north coast of Cornwall, not far from the important mining centers of Redruth and Camborne. Today on the hillsides above Porthtowan one can still see the remains of the South Towan Mine, brick engine houses and two chimneys abandoned after tin and copper production ceased, and shrubs of yellow gorse flourishing where mining has left its scars. A stream runs down to a narrow inlet, and the Atlantic waves break on the sands. The “vanning shovel” was a broad, nearly flat, shovel used by skilled “tin streamers”who extracted tin from sandy stream beds in Cornwall. At Porthtowan such NCHS Bulletin April 2001 Atlantic Ocean at CAMBORNE & REDRUTH m 1 2 3 4 = § = MILES 1 2 3 streamers were still working in the early years of this century. We are indebted for this material to Dr. John Rowe of Cornwall, who cited articles by “A Cornish Girl” in The Hard-rock Men: Cornish Immigrants and the North American Mining Frontier (Barnes and Noble, 1974), and who directed me to the primary sources at the Cornish Studies Library in Redruth. —Gage McKinney. ] . Peer RENO ON THE WEST BOUND TRAIN AT NINE a.m., the boundary line between Nevada and California is soon crossed and from the land of silver, we pass into that of gold. The ascent of the Sierra Nevada is begun in real earnest soon after leaving Truckee, a small railway town. The summit is reached about noon, and after emerging from the snow sheds which cover the line along the summit for some forty miles, the scenery becomes very magnificent; in fact, it is by far the grandest to be seen on the entire central route through from New York. The train whirls along right on the very backbone of the mighty Sierras, around sharp curves, and over high viaducts where, to look down the almost perpendicular walls, to the dark canyons thousands of feet below, is almost appalling. Here and there on the mountainsides are to be seen the deserted hydraulic washings of the oldtimers. The ’overland” pulls into Colfax at 2:50 p.m. Here we change to the little narrow gauge train, which is awaiting on the opposite side of the station, and are soon puffing away toward Grass Valley. This little train skirts through the valleys and canyons for a couple of hours, when houses suddenly appear along the line. In a few mo5