January 20, 1971 (12 pages)

ar yee oe epees EA A TE ee = Chapter XXIV THE SAGA OF HYDRAULIC MINING That news item of thirty four words, appearing in the issue of the Grass Valley Daily "Union" of January 9, 1884, battened down the doom of ahundred million dollar industry of the Northern Mines. Reference was made to the famous decision of Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, rendered in Federal Circuit Court and setting -a pattern for all related litigation. The decision did not prohibit hydraulic mining, as such. Its prohibition was against placing the debris of such mining in natural water” courses which, in the extremities of the miners, amounted to the same thing. Involved in the cataclysmal decision were works of greater extent, probably, than those of all the railroads traversing the Sierra Nevada, Vast investments were marked for extinction. Financial repercussions were felt in every state of the Union and in many countries of the worl. 712 -Avusand people knew instinctively that their means of livelihood was to be swept away. The spectre of the ghost era beckoned for no less than fifty towns, ranging from sparse camps to important industrial centers . The hydraulic mining industry was not localized. Rather it had major exemplification at intervals along more thana hundred miles of the Big Blue Lead, mention of which is made in another chapter, and its many tributaries and also in numerous detached areas. In each affected locality an aspiring community had been built up. Here and there the executives, principal engineers and resident stockholders, had formed communities of their own. One such_was Sebastopol on the San Juan Ridge a mild gesture of the aristocracy of hydraulic mining. But the storm had been long in the gathering and reverberations of it had increased steadily. The decision did not serve to quiet the conflicting elements. Rather it ushered in an era of legal and physical combat which was to continue beyond two decades. The so-called hydraulic mining wars aroused animosities which were to outlast the lifetimes of the participants. Hydraulic mining originated in the Nevada County division of the Northern Mines. Two locations are mentioned, American Hill, at the northwest edge of the Nevada City townsite, where (according to one version) a "Frenchman named Chabot" as early as 1852 experimented with washing down gravel banks by the expedient of a stream of water under pressure, and an indefinite location in the Union Hill region, southeast of Grass Valley, where E, E, Matteson, a New Englander, conducted like experiments, perhaps coincidentally, Chabot may have used canvas hose, but the tradition is that Matteson laid down lengths of stovepipe to conduct water to the gravel bank. It would appear that the process was an outgrowth of the backeasing method called ground sluicing first practiced at Selby Flat, northeast of Nevada City. That 1852 reference seems rather early and may be open to question, for it was not until 1854 and 1855 that news mentions of the hydraulicking process began to appear in the newspapers of the day. This item was printed in the Grass Valley Telegraph in April, 1855: HYDRAULIC MINING The company which we recently made mention of as having made use of hydraulic hose in their mining labor on the slide (at Grass Valley's north city limits) are still contining their operations with great apparent success. They have over 1900 fe‘. of sluice boxes, and the way the dirt is forced into them by this method of mining is a caution to every old established method. They took out over $600 the other evening from aspace of afew feet inthe boxes. When they make a thorough cleaning up, we can probably gather a large item. From the middle of the decade of the 1850's hydraulic mining crashed its way to incomparable heights of earth-moving. It spread from the central towns mentioned tothe San Juan Ridge to establish an almost solid chain of diggings forty miles in length. The town of North San Juan became a center of perfervid activity. North Bloomfield, at the upper end of the chain, had its rich Malakoff mine with its 600 foot unbottomed banks, constituting perhaps the largest single exemplification of the process inthe gold country. Inthe Sierra Plumas country, hydraulic mining extended from the La Porte region across the forks of the Yuba River to Alleghany and its related Minnesota group of producers, The Alpha Omega mines near Washington, Nevada county, took high place. Scars left by the giants today color the whole landscape of the Little York Ridge, on both sides of Greenhorn Creek, from Liberty Hill to where the stream Nevada ‘County Nugge eee pss ——————————————— THE NORTHI By Edmunc HYDRAULIC MINING is explained in detail inthe Northern Mines. Here is 5 empties into Bear River, adistance of more than fifteen miles. Included in the area were the flaming towns of Little York, You Bet, Red Dog, Brown's: Hill, Gouge Eye, Remington Hill, Chalk Mountain, Dutch Flat, Placer County, was a center of vast activity and Gold Run nearby was to fight as manfully against extinction as did North Bloomfield. Nevada City was touched to the extent that its Sugar Loaf was neatly sliced on its southeasterly side, and Blue Tent, opposite on the South Yuba, Towa Hill, Yankee Jim's, Michigan Bluff and to Forest Hill and beyond. For every location mentioned there were dozens of related or independent developments. It fell to the lot of four rivers the Feather, the Yuba, the Bear and the American to carry the grist of those mighty excavations. The load of the Feather was relatively light, its three drainage compatriots dividing the bulk of the welter of debris, Lindgren's Professional Paper No. 75, "The Tertiary . Graveis of the Sierra Nevada," states that Bear River, the smallest stream of the four, was the depository of the greatest yardage disintegrated material. Estimates based on actual measurements of the excavated areas, made by associates of Lindgren be 1895 and 1901, arrive at what is termed the “conservative total" of 1,295,00C of the hydraulic mines on strea ramento." What of engine was it tha Those first hydraulickers prob engine type. But as the proc equipment increased in size an tions, the giant (also referred tc gals As described in the catalc Works, the giant consists of a ri and not unlike a military field which links the barrel with th is a hinged nozzle which serv which rotaties on ball bearing the gravel bank, adds force to the flow. These figures (in dian Hendy catalogue: Inlet, 7 to 18; b In some localities, or interr gravel were described as "ceme gamated by the weight of unkno

ar yee oe epees EA A TE ee = Chapter XXIV THE SAGA OF HYDRAULIC MINING That news item of thirty four words, appearing in the issue of the Grass Valley Daily "Union" of January 9, 1884, battened down the doom of ahundred million dollar industry of the Northern Mines. Reference was made to the famous decision of Judge Lorenzo Sawyer, rendered in Federal Circuit Court and setting -a pattern for all related litigation. The decision did not prohibit hydraulic mining, as such. Its prohibition was against placing the debris of such mining in natural water” courses which, in the extremities of the miners, amounted to the same thing. Involved in the cataclysmal decision were works of greater extent, probably, than those of all the railroads traversing the Sierra Nevada, Vast investments were marked for extinction. Financial repercussions were felt in every state of the Union and in many countries of the worl. 712 -Avusand people knew instinctively that their means of livelihood was to be swept away. The spectre of the ghost era beckoned for no less than fifty towns, ranging from sparse camps to important industrial centers . The hydraulic mining industry was not localized. Rather it had major exemplification at intervals along more thana hundred miles of the Big Blue Lead, mention of which is made in another chapter, and its many tributaries and also in numerous detached areas. In each affected locality an aspiring community had been built up. Here and there the executives, principal engineers and resident stockholders, had formed communities of their own. One such_was Sebastopol on the San Juan Ridge a mild gesture of the aristocracy of hydraulic mining. But the storm had been long in the gathering and reverberations of it had increased steadily. The decision did not serve to quiet the conflicting elements. Rather it ushered in an era of legal and physical combat which was to continue beyond two decades. The so-called hydraulic mining wars aroused animosities which were to outlast the lifetimes of the participants. Hydraulic mining originated in the Nevada County division of the Northern Mines. Two locations are mentioned, American Hill, at the northwest edge of the Nevada City townsite, where (according to one version) a "Frenchman named Chabot" as early as 1852 experimented with washing down gravel banks by the expedient of a stream of water under pressure, and an indefinite location in the Union Hill region, southeast of Grass Valley, where E, E, Matteson, a New Englander, conducted like experiments, perhaps coincidentally, Chabot may have used canvas hose, but the tradition is that Matteson laid down lengths of stovepipe to conduct water to the gravel bank. It would appear that the process was an outgrowth of the backeasing method called ground sluicing first practiced at Selby Flat, northeast of Nevada City. That 1852 reference seems rather early and may be open to question, for it was not until 1854 and 1855 that news mentions of the hydraulicking process began to appear in the newspapers of the day. This item was printed in the Grass Valley Telegraph in April, 1855: HYDRAULIC MINING The company which we recently made mention of as having made use of hydraulic hose in their mining labor on the slide (at Grass Valley's north city limits) are still contining their operations with great apparent success. They have over 1900 fe‘. of sluice boxes, and the way the dirt is forced into them by this method of mining is a caution to every old established method. They took out over $600 the other evening

from aspace of afew feet inthe boxes. When they make a thorough cleaning up, we can probably gather a large item. From the middle of the decade of the 1850's hydraulic mining crashed its way to incomparable heights of earth-moving. It spread from the central towns mentioned tothe San Juan Ridge to establish an almost solid chain of diggings forty miles in length. The town of North San Juan became a center of perfervid activity. North Bloomfield, at the upper end of the chain, had its rich Malakoff mine with its 600 foot unbottomed banks, constituting perhaps the largest single exemplification of the process inthe gold country. Inthe Sierra Plumas country, hydraulic mining extended from the La Porte region across the forks of the Yuba River to Alleghany and its related Minnesota group of producers, The Alpha Omega mines near Washington, Nevada county, took high place. Scars left by the giants today color the whole landscape of the Little York Ridge, on both sides of Greenhorn Creek, from Liberty Hill to where the stream Nevada ‘County Nugge eee pss ——————————————— THE NORTHI By Edmunc HYDRAULIC MINING is explained in detail inthe Northern Mines. Here is 5 empties into Bear River, adistance of more than fifteen miles. Included in the area were the flaming towns of Little York, You Bet, Red Dog, Brown's: Hill, Gouge Eye, Remington Hill, Chalk Mountain, Dutch Flat, Placer County, was a center of vast activity and Gold Run nearby was to fight as manfully against extinction as did North Bloomfield. Nevada City was touched to the extent that its Sugar Loaf was neatly sliced on its southeasterly side, and Blue Tent, opposite on the South Yuba, Towa Hill, Yankee Jim's, Michigan Bluff and to Forest Hill and beyond. For every location mentioned there were dozens of related or independent developments. It fell to the lot of four rivers the Feather, the Yuba, the Bear and the American to carry the grist of those mighty excavations. The load of the Feather was relatively light, its three drainage compatriots dividing the bulk of the welter of debris, Lindgren's Professional Paper No. 75, "The Tertiary . Graveis of the Sierra Nevada," states that Bear River, the smallest stream of the four, was the depository of the greatest yardage disintegrated material. Estimates based on actual measurements of the excavated areas, made by associates of Lindgren be 1895 and 1901, arrive at what is termed the “conservative total" of 1,295,00C of the hydraulic mines on strea ramento." What of engine was it tha Those first hydraulickers prob engine type. But as the proc equipment increased in size an tions, the giant (also referred tc gals As described in the catalc Works, the giant consists of a ri and not unlike a military field which links the barrel with th is a hinged nozzle which serv which rotaties on ball bearing the gravel bank, adds force to the flow. These figures (in dian Hendy catalogue: Inlet, 7 to 18; b In some localities, or interr gravel were described as "ceme gamated by the weight of unkno