Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

About This Item:

Title: Volume 055-3 - July 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 07:07:20 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

Page: of 8  

The Story of the Cascade Canal By A. Dale Johnson © 2001 The Hydraulic Mining Era Y 1855 HYDRAULIC MINING HAD BECOME THE most prevalent and fruitful method of mining the “goldbearing gravels” in Nevada County. It was essential that hydraulic mines have a water supply high above the gravel beds—but that was not where the water was! Water soon became big business with ditches springing up everywhere. The Cascade was one of those ditches, built in 1857-60, and became part of the largest of all water companies, the South Yuba Canal Company. By 1869 this company had 200 miles of canal costing $1,500,000—and there were nearly 600 miles of canals and ditches in all of Nevada County. The Rock Creek, Deer Creek and South Yuba Canal Company (later shortened to South Yuba Canal Company) completed the most visionary and fantastic water project ever in California with its South Yuba Canal. This canal took water from the South Yuba at elevation 4675 feet, high up in the mountains, just below the present Spaulding Dam, and took it down the Bear Valley a distance of 16 miles, where smaller distributing canals took the water to the various mining areas. It was a “wholesale” facility, or the equivalent of a moderm freeway, in terms of transporting large amounts of \ water. The South Yuba Canal started with over one mile of six-foot wide by five-foot deep flume bolted to a ledge blasted into the sheer cliff below the diversion. (This section is now made of pipe and is visible from the Bowman Lake Road.) From the lip of the Bear Valley, flume, ditch and tunnel construction continued for fifteen miles, where it tunneled 3100 feet through the ridge to reemerge within the Deer Creek/Yuba drainage. This project was completed in 1857 at a cost of $500,000. This canal made it possible to get large quantities of water to almost any place it was needed, because its elevation was well above the gold-bearing gravels. The main distribution canals were Chalk Bluff (built in 1858), Ridge (1858), Cascade (1860), and Dutch Flat (1865)—and all went to major hydraulic areas. The Cascade had its own water right of 1400 miner’s inches, but also used water from the South Yuba Canal. The genius of the South Yuba Canal system was the high mountain storage—most notably Meadow Lake (1858) at 7515 feet elevation and Fordyce (1874) at 6400 feet. This allowed the spring run-off to be captured and rationed out late in the summer, when most streams would have dried up otherwise. (> Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin VOLUME 55 NUMBER 3 JULY 2001 X yy, You Bet, Hunt’s Hill, Quaker Hill, Scotts Flat and Buckeye Hill. This area was found early on to be one of the best “gravel-mining” areas. It sat squarely as part of the path of . the “ancestral Yuba River” flowing north from the Dutch Flat area toward the Washington ridge. Little York township straddled the ridge separating the Deer Creek drainage and the Greenhorn Creek arm of the Bear River. This area ranges in elevation from 2900 feet (at Scotts Flat on the north) to 3300 feet at the top of the saddle near Quaker Hill (site of current Cascade Shores community), and then down to 2600 feet on the south side to Greenhom Creek. Gold-bearing gravel was exposed on both sides of this saddle, part of the path of the ancestral river. Initially, most of the mining activity took place on the Greenhorn side, using water from Greenhorn Creek. One of those early sites was Buckeye Hill, which may have been the site where hydraulic mining was first developed (instead of the Buckeye Hill near Nevada City). Anthony Chabot, Eli Miller and Edward E. Matteson crossed the plains together and started their mining activity as partners at this location in 1852. An account by Mr. G. E. Poore of Red Dog indicates the process was actually first used there in early 1853, and then the machinery was duplicated, at the request of Mr. A. B. Caldwell, and placed into use at his American Hill mine in Nevada City. Edward E. Matteson was in charge of the American Hill operation in 1853, so, whichever version is correct, he was still very much a part of the invention, along with Miller and Chabot. A key player in the Cascade story was Amos T. Laird, one of the biggest gravel miners in Nevada City. He had considerable standing in the community, as indicated by his designation as a commissioner for the first election held after the formation of Nevada County in 1851. He was also a member of the “Nevada Rifles” (a volunteer militia company), along with future California Supreme Court Justice Niles Searls. Laird consolidated claims in the Gold Flat area and brought in his own ditch to sluice the area. This ditch exfo". The Cascade Canal came into use as the way to get water ~into what formerly was known as Little York township, which included the mining areas of Little York, Red Dog, perience apparently led him to get into the ditch business in a big way. He then partnered with Thomas Chambers to build the Cascade Canal to deliver water to the Little York